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Comment by selfmodruntime | Hacker News Reader

Stop calling working people without a college education stupid and stop alienating men. "Non-educated" people work just as hard or harder than the rest of us. I've been to college and the only thing it "educated" me in is Computer Science, which I majored in. I'm not in any way better as a human being than my friends working in construction. Quite the contrary, their job is far more important to society than mine. If I stopped my niche research tomorrow, no one would really care. If handymen, farmers, or truckers stopped working, there would be riots.

Also, the DNC should really stop forcing unwanted candidates down people's throats. It doesn't work, even when you spam social platforms with your narrative.

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> Quite the contrary, their job is far more important to society than mine.

Non-american here, but I feel pretty much the same way. I also do niche research in computer science. People working in the supermarket, people driving trains and busses, medicine workers, construction workers, they all do work that is vastly more important to society than mine. A single educator in my child's kindergarten most likely does work that is orders of magnitude more important to society than mine is. Maybe this attitude comes from the fact that both of my parents never set a foot into higher education, but it is something I feel very strongly, and which is quite humbling.

I remember my father predicting in the early 2000s that the academic elite was increasingly crippling the country by adding more and more non-pragmatic rules in seek of some idealistic utopia, and that they would lose the support of the masses pretty soon. As a young teenager, I did not believe him, and in my arrogance of youth, I also dismissed it as the ramblings of an uneducated worker. But sure enough, most of the things he feared back then turned out to come true.

> I also do niche research in computer science. People working in the supermarket, people driving trains and busses, medicine workers, construction workers, they all do work that is vastly more important to society than mine.

Today, for sure. I think it's far more nuanced in the long term. Most of these jobs would be non-existent without the researchers of yesterday.

Of course, if you disregard today completely for building the tomorrow, a lot of people who don't get access to wealth today will be pissed. Which is very roughly what's happening in the USA. "What we have now is perfect, and can sustain forever, stop with the progressive BS", chant the conservatives.

It's a hard balance. Dems messed it up, Reps will mess it up further, I bet.

I'm just observing from an another continent.

> Most of these jobs would be non-existent without the researchers of yesterday

The research of yesterday was on another level than most of what is done today. Not to say that it's worthless, pursuit of knowledge is always worth it.

> The research of yesterday was on another level than most of what is done today

In what ways? The impact? That can't be proven until "tomorrow" comes, no?

Survivorship bias

This is all moot now. We have a far-right supermajority in government. America is fucked for the next few decades at the very least. The DNC is no longer relevant.

Calling republicans far right is the exact rhetoric that alienates and divides people. Take the next four years to try to find some common ground with the right.

Common ground. The whole democratic apparatus of the United States might get severely hollowed out for the foreseeable future, and you're talking about finding common ground.

What he means is: please let us hollow out democracy without you interfering.

Not at all wanting to be confrontational- genuinely curious; if they’re not on the far right then where are they? The Democrats seem fairly centrist, and it’s the more wayward independents (eg Greens) that seem to be on the Left.

My perspective is European & Australian, so I wonder if that skews it.

They are absolutely far right, they just hate it when you call them that.

Because it’s illogical. Far right implies there is an edge to a majority “right”. Calling the entire majority “far right” is just lazy adhominem attacks. Calling the entire the democrat party far left is equally stupid.

Calling the democratic party "far left" is stupid for a different reason, viewed from a global perspective, they're probably best positioned as centre-right.

Depends what you care about. Broadly speaking the entire developed world is further left than the US on workplace/business/union policy issues.

The US left (federally, not talking Alabama dems here) is generally more left on immigration, abortion and LGBTQ+ and affirmative action type policies than Europe, broadly speaking. Drug policy is a wash IMO. There's a lot more variation in Europe because the EU doesn't arbitrate social issues the way the US federal government does.

> Broadly speaking the entire developed world is further left than the US on workplace/business/union policy issues

This is what's crippling them. We initially built the social security net to counter this issue. Then we increased employee rights to maximum levels. I think one of either would be beneficial, but not both.

> not talking Alabama dems here

As an Alabama Dem, this is something that is just so disappointing to see when we're assumed to be not "generally more left"

There are so many here supporting and doing good, hard work with things like the Yellowhammer Fund, ¡HICA!, and Magic City Acceptance Center and Academy but we have to fight for any acknowledgement. We had more people vote for Kamala than several states but they amount to nothing in the public eye. It's so deflating and discouraging

I think you have to acknowledge that the democratic politicians that rise to prominence in your state are not exactly the left of the left when it comes to policy in the same way that Christ Christie and Charlier Baker aren't hardline republicans. It's just a reflection of the electorate, not a personal slight.

Doug Jones was our last democratic politician on the national stage and he voted quite liberally. We just don't have many anymore, due to gerrymandering and our electorate. I think Terri Sewell is our only non-Republican

It is not the best

https://ballotpedia.org/Doug_Jones_(Alabama)

Can you give some examples of what a far left country or government would be?

This is not true. Their identity politics stances are widely unpopular across the globe, and you won't find another country where they are represented in political discourse.

Yeah, you’re mixing up a couple facts with opinions here.

What opinions?

> Because it’s illogical. Far right implies there is an edge to a majority “right”.

"far right" and "far left" are terms for contextualizing a political stance, based on the world view and actions. It's doesn't matter where the majority of people stands, they can be all far right or far left or in the center, it wouldn't change the definitions.

No, they’re relative terms. “Far right” doesn’t mean anything in a vacuum.

The nazi government of Germany was "far right" even when a majority of the population supported it. The political left-right spectrum is roughly defined with socialism, communism on the far left, social democracy on the left, classical liberalism on the center-right, conservatism on the right, and ultra-nationalism, fascism on the far right.

In America you generally only see "Far X" used as a slur to basically imply extremism. I'm sure a lot of people will have strong feelings about whether that's accurate or not but my point is mainly that I think it's weird when people in places like Europe go by the academic definition with regard to American politics.

Far-right is well defined globally. Few core values: nationalism, authoritarianism, anti-socialism, economic libertarianism, racial and gender hierarchies, anti-establishment sentiments.

If you think a party is ticking many boxes, you may label it as "far-right".

Maybe I am missing something but Trump doesn't support much of that?

> nationalism, authoritarianism

Sure, you could say he supports this.

> anti-socialism

Not a fair right position. This I'd what anybody who is right of the center left position thinks.

> economic libertarianism

Trump doesn't support this. He wants all sorts of tariffs and the like.

> racial and gender hierarchies

I haven't seen any proof he supports such a thing.

> anti-establishment sentiments.

This is not a far right position. This is a populist position.

> tariffs and the like

Protectionism also is a value associated with "far-right". It may sound like it conflicts with libertarianism but in my understanding that's applied nationally, while closing borders.

I won't argue on positions of a specific candidate or party.

> This is not a far right position. This is a populist position.

Populism also is often associated with far-right.

> Protectionism also is a value associated with "far-right".

While it may be associated with the "far right", it is held by others as well. Many unions, in the past, supported protectionism for example.

Regardless, the argument was not about Trump holding protectionist views, but libertarian views which he clearly doesn't hold to.

> It may sound like it conflicts with libertarianism but in my understanding that's applied nationally, while closing borders.

Closing the borders has nothing to do with libertarian economics or protectionism.

If you go back 15 years ago plenty of people on the left supported restricting immigration. Bernie Sanders famously called open borders a Koch Brothers plan to get cheap labor and harm workers in the US.

> Populism also is often associated with far-right.

While most populist politicians, at the moment, are on the right, it is not a right wing position. Bernie Sanders is often referred to as a populist as well.

Regardless, it is not a far right position to be anti-establishment or whatever somebody defines populist as.

Sorry if that was not clear in my messages. It's not binary and exclusive. The values are commonly associated with far-right. That doesn't mean each value is exclusive to far-right. It doesn't mean a far-right party cannot deny part of them or accept any other values.

As with every definition there is a grey area and when a party is labelled as far-right it means that it ticks many boxes that put it in this category. Of course, people can disagree, argue on positions, that's politics.

> Closing the borders has nothing to do with libertarian economics or protectionism.

On that specific point, I was thinking about economical protectionism than physically closing border.

> populist [...] is not a right wing position.

True, it's usually associated with far-right or far-left rather than regular party.

By that reasoning Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy weren't far right, because a very significant portion of their population actually voted for that. Or France now, our "Rassemblement National" used to be far right, but now enough people (about a third) vote for them that they no longer are.

Sorry if that feels like a strawman, but I find the idea of using popularity to determining what counts as "far" stupid and dangerous.

Maybe the problem is with all of you trying to reduce this to one dimension.

They are a corporate party, just like the democrats. Supporting secure borders is not far right. Republicans have support of every race, they are not racist despite the media repeating that they are. Trump is very hesitant about getting involved in wars. I see nothing far right about them, maybe they are somewhat nationalistic instead of globalist, but the US is a diverse nation. At the end of the day they are just another corporate party that appealed more to the American people.

Can you define far right?

According to Wikipedia, "Far-right politics ... are typically marked by radical conservatism, authoritarianism, ultra-nationalism, and nativism"

Digging into the page for radical conservatism, "Elements of ultraconservatism typically rely on cultural crisis; they frequently support anti-globalism – adopting stances of anti-immigration, nationalism, and sovereignty – use populism and political polarization, with in-group and out-group practices.[3][4][5][6] The primary economic ideology for most ultraconservatives is neoliberalism.[6] The use of conspiracy theories is also common amongst ultraconservatives.".

Trump is well-known for his populist, anti-globalist, anti-immigration, and pro-nationalist rhetoric. He has also promulgated conspiarcy theories such as the Obama birther conspiracy and claims of stolen elections.

As for authoritarian, Trump forms a textbook example of a personality cult. He frequently attacks existing institutions and an independent media, undermining trust in a free democratic process. He frequently issues positive messages about authoritarian dictators in other countries such as Bolsonaro, Orban and Putin.

Ah, yes. That well know impartial source of political facts, wikipedia.

>>Trump is well-known for his populist, anti-globalist, anti-immigration, and pro-nationalist rhetoric. He has also promulgated conspiarcy theories such as the Obama birther conspiracy and claims of stolen elections.

You can be patriotic and anti-immigration without being far right. I think the claims of a stolen election are yet to be properly investigated. I'd welcome a truly impartial look into all the covid postal vote shenanigans last time.

>>As for authoritarian, Trump forms a textbook example of a personality cult. He frequently attacks existing institutions and an independent media, undermining trust in a free democratic process. He frequently issues positive messages about authoritarian dictators in other countries such as Bolsonaro, Orban and Putin.

You can criticise institutions now? And I'm sure he'd be in favour of an indepenndent media if America had one.

Putin is a obviously a dictator. Bolsonaro and Orban not so much (especially Bolsonaro as he was, er, voted out which would seem to automatically disqualify him from being a dictator).

Political ideologies are defined by a cluster of stances that collectively form a narrative. Those stances may individually have some debatable justifications, but it's when they're taken together that it becomes compelling.

It's not just

"there's something wrong in our society"

it's

"there's an insidious dark force at work, it's brought us down from our glorious past, these groups of people are involved, violence against this threat is understandable, only a few men are strong and capable enough to lead us out of this...".

In 1930s Germany and Italy the "groups of people" were marxists, jews, gypsies, homosexuals and a few others. In modern Russia it's LGBT, central Asians, objectors to the war, and various religious groups like Jehovah's Witnesses. For Trump and a lot of Europe's right-wing it's LGBT, immigrants, intellectuals, and liberals (though he calls them communists).

He's not said anything like this though:

A few examples...

For insidious dark forces, he alludes to the "deep state", talks about an "enemy from within", and uses phrases like "poisoning the blood of the nation".

For glorious past, there's the MAGA motto, and his narrative that political correctness and lefty lunatics have destroyed American exceptionalism.

For violence, he's repeatedly threatened violence against protestors to his rallies, defended or refused to condemn violence by his own supporters, and suggested that political opponents deserve to have violence inflicted on them.

For only a few men, his prodigious hyperbole about how he's the best at everything, and he literally describes himself as "I am your retribution" who will usher in a "new golden age". And again, he's generally praising of strongman authoritarians around the world

>> For insidious dark forces, he alludes to the "deep state", talks about an "enemy from within", and uses phrases like "poisoning the blood of the nation".

What about calling your political opponents "garbage" and "deplorables" and "fascists"?

>>For glorious past, there's the MAGA motto, and his narrative that political correctness and lefty lunatics have destroyed American exceptionalism.

Probably objectively correct.

>> For violence, he's repeatedly threatened violence against protestors to his rallies, defended or refused to condemn violence by his own supporters, and suggested that political opponents deserve to have violence inflicted on them.

Thank god the Democrats only have peaceful groups like Antifa and BLM. And it's not like Democrat supporters haven't tried to kill him twice. The Democrats are objectively the more violent party.

> What about calling your political opponents "garbage" and "deplorables" and "fascists"?

I condemn name-calling, but it is not the same as conjuring images of insidious dark forces.

> Thank god the Democrats only have peaceful groups like Antifa and BLM.

I condemn the violence of these groups. As do leading Democrats.

Not sure what you're trying to argue at this point. I've demonstrated a clear fascist narrative from Trump and all you've done is draw poorly conceived similarities.

LOL. You've come up with a couple of examples that apply equally to the Democratic Party.

But... they don't apply. For the reasons I gave :s

Yes, from your left wing perspective I can see why you might think that "It's different when we do it."

You can't see the difference in implication between "garbage" and "enemy from within"?

What about calling people "fascists" and "threats to democracy"?

It's telling that the only candidate to face assassination attempts was Republican.

Yes. Calling an individual a fascist is different to suggesting there are insidious dark forces at work...

Let me turn the question to you. At what point would a politician become far right? Have you ever seen a far-right politician?

I think if they actually advocate violence against minority groups, start genocidal wars, cancel elections etc.

I guess everyone is moderate in your book.

Why would you ask someone to define a known concept that has been around for decades? It’s not like definitions are based on someone’s opinion.

Because they’re trolling, knowingly or unknowingly. There’s a presumption here that HN commenters can operate a search engine and read pages of text, and are therefore capable of basic research.

If they’re asking for a definition, it’s likely because they already know it and just want you to fall into a “gotcha” they can then divert discussion toward in their favor. It’s cheap theatrics.

You can't be unknowingly trolling as it requires intent. You could argue wilfull ignorance I guess?

At a quick glance, I found 10 definitions of far right that differ slightly. An assumption of malice here fails. Remarkably so.

You can miss me with that last part, because I have to assume malice on the part of those who try to steer discourse around vocabulary or policy nuance rather than acknowledge the binary reality of the question.

Vocabulary is what we have for textual discourse lacking other inputs, and clarification on terms is a basic and actual necessity of such. You say you "have to assume malice" and, in line with what I already alluded to, that requires malice.

It's not pedantic to ask that your statements be taken clearly and in the right context.

It's worth noting as well that in the context of inclusion, pointing out pedantry at all is going to exclude a group in the "common" understanding of exclusion.

Most importantly, this person is trying to understand your perspective and instead of trying to sway their opinion, you criticize them. One thing that the "far right" has accomplished recently is an understanding that everyone is a person and worth respect and voice. Which is evidenced by the countless videos displaying such behaviour and the ubiquitous response of blessing attributed to people with such inquisition in comment sections everywhere.

In stark contrast is the term uneducated and it's supposed link to intelligence. Don't they teach logical fallacies in college anymore?

I am actually not. I just don't know of any policies or promises of Trump that I would genuinely categorize as far right. Border control is not far right according to me.

First of all I dislike Trump and for sure have liberal views in lot of aspects. And say even if I have malice intent and I am a hardcore Trump supporter, comments like yours wouldn't have changed my mind. Assuming you want to change people's side, it is not the reply that would change it.

Definitions are often based on opinion. Definitions differ depending on many things.

Some definitions are not opinions.

The definition of "far right" is an opinion. Failing to define it in discourse will inevitably result in a lack of positive outcome.

That some people are born better than others and they deserve more in life. It’s an incredibly appealing message.

If you think you’re exceptional, vote Gorgoiler ‘28!

> That some people are born better than others and they deserve more in life.

Isn't that simply factual human nature? If someone is tall, attractive, physically fit, hardworking, and intelligent, isn't it meritocratic for that person to accrue overall greater benefits/utility to their societal contributions compared to someone who is ugly, unfit, lazy, and stupid?

I wouldn't categorize that position as "far right" at all. I think the position you are trying to express is that the ugly/unfit/lazy/stupid should not be punished or abused by the government/laws/society just for existing. I would be surprised if you walked into an average MAGA rally and found a plurality of people who disagree with that.

That is one of infinite potential framings. It should be obvious it has served its usefulness and is no longer helpful and constructive.

Non-American here too, but since your perspective is EU, what is Nazi party when the Republican party is far right? Like, far far far right?

Depends on how you define 'right'.

Were they conservative? No, they wanted to upend society and create one that is nothing like anything ever seen before. They were also anti-religion. In many ways, they were anti-tradition, and I wouldn't consider their obsession with bringing back dead traditions to be traditional.

Were they hateful, racist, etc.? Yes, up to you if that's considered 'right'.

Were they, like how American political parties are, friends of big business? Not really, they wanted to sponsor monopolies and whatnot but also wanted the businesses to have no influence over the state, rather the other way around, the state can force the big business to do what they want. As far as if it actually worked that way when they were in power, I'm not sure.

Can you name a policy of today's republican party that is further right than the republican party of 20 years ago? From my perspective they've ceded ground on many social issues. They had a porn star speak at the RNC convention this year. Dick Cheney, one of the people responsible for the "War on Terror", endorsed Kamala Harris. The idea that federal politics in the US has shifted right, not left, is baffling to me.

> Can you name a policy of today's republican party that is further right than the republican party of 20 years ago?

Sure I can: "mass deportation now"

Nope. When I worked in a factory as a teenager, ICE came in and presumably deported all of the illegals, because they didn't show up the next day. A big reason Trump got elected is because they stopped doing that, and "mass deportation now" is effectively enforcement of the same policy as it was back then.

Democrats believe a man who thinks he is a woman is scientifically a woman. They believe in censorship. They believe in supporting and growing the military industrial complex. They believe in a discrimination campaign against whites and Asians, and meanwhile allowing unfettered illegal immigration with the intent of giving amnesty to the millions that entered through the forcibly unguarded border.

They are not centrist by any stretch of the imagination.

> Democrats believe a man who thinks he is a woman is scientifically a woman

It's a bit more complicated than that. Gender is a social construct, mostly determined by genes & genitalia. It's not quite enough to believe you're a woman, other people have to believe it too. Another issue at play is that there are far more "intersex" people (who have some characteristics of the opposite sex, sometimes to the point doctors don't quite know whether to list them as male or female), and from what I've heard trans people often (possibly generally) are "intersex" in a way that wasn't visible at birth. The idea of a female's brain in a male's body isn't that far fetched.

> They believe in censorship.

I believe this one is more popular in the far right (when in power) than in the far left (when in power)

> They believe in supporting and growing the military industrial complex.

Militarism sounds like it's more popular on the right. Though it can be more complicated: military backed imperialism can indeed support stuff like welfare at home.

---

Now the elephant in the room: last time I checked, democrats were firmly capitalists: they believe the means of production should be owned privately. Even if you exclude actual communism from acceptable discourse, they're fairly poor at public services and keeping inequality in check.

> The idea of a female's brain in a male's body isn't that far fetched.

How could it possibly be a female brain if it's part of a male body?

Oh come on, don't pretend you don't know what I mean.

If you mean what you say, then please define it in a way that holds up to logical and empirical scrutiny.

Just look up "intersex". Or don't. It's your time. Mine is up.

I find it curious how people are so willing to uncritically accept this ill-defined "female brain in a male body" idea without thinking it through sufficiently to be able to explain it.

The third person plural is so convenient. You did well, not directly accusing me of uncritically accepting an idea. You did well, not directly saying I didn't think it through enough to explain it. Your caution paid off, you just avoided two mistakes in one sentence.

You're a bit light on justifying the burden of proof, though.

To give you a bit of perspective,the democrats are right of the Conservatives in the UK.

So they would kinda feel feel far-rightish to us only because the democrats are more conservative than ours

Perhaps you haven’t been listening to the rhetoric of republicans.

Why is everyone else responsible but the people responsible? Not calling out fascism is surely just as problematic.

Do you have any data (except for interpersonal psychology) on whether letting fascism slide or calling it out ultimately makes the situation worse? At what point do you call fascism fascism? When it's too late?

> At what point do you call fascism fascism? When it's too late?

You call it fascism when it is fascism. Once it is openly fascist then it is probably too late to stop, but you don't call it fascism until it is fascism.

So, only when it is too late can you talk about it?

How exactly is Trump/Republican party fascist?

You could try to answer this yourself by looking up the definition and cross checking it with the rhetoric from the republican party during this campaign.

The burden of proof is with the accuser.

I fail to see how the Republican party is fascist. I think it's a term the Left uses to demonize their opposition. Ironically, that is kind of fascist-like.

> The term fascist has been used as a pejorative,[74] regarding varying movements across the far right of the political spectrum. George Orwell noted in 1944 that the term had been used to denigrate diverse positions "in internal politics". Orwell said that while fascism is "a political and economic system" that was inconvenient to define, "as used, the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless. ... almost any English person would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'Fascist'",[75] and in 1946 wrote that '"Fascism' has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies something not desirable."[76] Richard Griffiths of the University of Wales wrote in 2000 that "fascism" is the "most misused, and over-used word, of our times".[77]: 1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

I assume you have good reasons to believe Republicans are fascist. I'm simply asking you and any others who believe this to share your reasons. Is that not reasonable?

Even if I listed all reasons why the rhetoric during the campaign reeked of fascism, you’d simply dismiss them, like all the times before where this has been called out already. This is why people rightly feel people like you act like they’re in a cult. You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.

Like right now, by editing your comment you're desperately trying to pose there is no accepted definition of fascism. Dismissing definitions only fits the bill.

Ah yes, the "you're too stupid or unreasonable (i.e. deplorable or trash)" to reason with so I won't even try argument.

> you’d simply dismiss them

I'm a random internet stranger. How could you possibility know me so well? Again, it's just a blanket stereotyping and demonization of people who have different beliefs that you do. A mass ad hominem attack. That attitude is a root of many problems in the political arena. I expect that kind of rhetoric on Reddit, but am disappointed to encounter it here.

> Even if I listed all reasons

I'm a busy person and I assume you are too. Why don't you list one and we'll go from there?

You already try to dismiss an accepted definition, so why would I bother reiterating all the easy to find articles, videos and podcasts that literally quote and warn of Trump's rhetoric? Do you think you sound like a person that is trying to understand criticism of his party, especially right after voting for them?

> You already try to dismiss an accepted definition

In this discussion, we've already defined it? where? That's news to me that I can dismiss something that I wasn't aware of.

> Do you think you sound like a person that is welcoming criticism

I am very welcoming of criticism of my party and the one I voted for. Trump can be a bombastic jerk. I voted for him because his policies align more with my values than Harris'. He was the lesser (much lesser) of two evils. I didn't vote for him in the primaries and I wish he wouldn't have won them.

Anyway, you continue to make assumptions about me rather than discuss/debate the issue of why you think Trump is a fascist. It's not much of a discussion and so I'll opt out now. All the best to you.

If you think every debate should first have a discussion on definitions, before you can get to the heart of the argument, you should not be debating.

We don't have to define it. That's the point. It's already been done for us.

It's the same with asking me to list reasons or sources that explain the republican parties fascist tendencies, while that's been done thousands of times through the course of their campaign. If you were truly curious as to why people might feel that way, you could have done so at any point during the last few months.

You did't accept the definition you bothered to look up and you didn't accept the valid concerns people had during the campaign.

The real reason you're walking away from this conversation is because you don't care if I am right.

You're not afraid of fascism, because you think you're in the right group.

I think the other poster was just being polite, trying to have a discussion about the left's misuse of the term fascism, yet failed to account for the degree of intelligence required to understand such nuance. So let me spell it out for you all, you are misusing the term and on the odd occasion that one of you actually checks the definition, you view it through your own biased lens, rather than reading the complex description thoroughly. You cherry-pick some terms and twist others around to suit your own dogma, with the intended goal of using it to villainise the enemy.

If you replace nationalism with partisanship, in very many ways the modern left is far more closely aligned with the vile components of fascism than the republican party, or even Trump supporters. The left have done everything they can do vilify anyone who disagrees with their core beliefs, which they hold are a matter of morale superiority and to which, in their minds, no person of moral substance could ever find disagreeable.

By very definition, conservatives are conservative. When they disagree with someone, they continue to treat them respectfully and move on with their lives, comfortable in the reality that there exists people around them with very different beliefs than their own. The left, on the other hand, do no such thing and yet look in the mirror and convince themselves that they're the better people in all this.

Trump less won this election than the democrats did lose it by arrogantly putting up a candidate with strong ties to the current unpopular administration and whose other policies and attributes did not appeal to the swing voter.

I don’t even have a dog in this fight since I'm from the EU. I can see why the Democrats lost. I can also see why Trump won.

And I'm factually correct when I say that Trump’s rhetoric is dangerous. He has motivated even a reasonable person like you to defend him vehemently. He made you part of his group, and by the looks of it you’re already starting to hate those who are not in it.

You couldn't be more wrong about me. In-fact I did not vote for Trump and have always been in the centre, between the republicans and the democrats. Shockingly I'm considered right wing by the left and left wing by the right, albeit moreso by the left. I'm exactly who both parties should be targeting when they want to win an election and while I couldn't bring myself to vote Trump, the democrats certainly didn't sell me on Harris.

I have observed from the sidelines how both sides behave towards one another and while there are some extremists on the right whose behaviour is utterly shameful, I have noticed that a significant number of moderate people on the left have grown utterly intolerant of conservatives over the last decade and they'll vocalise their disgust and even go as far as lodging complaints with employers or writing negative reviews about businesses, outing and harassing people whose views they disagree with. While the extreme right tend towards violence, what those on the left do is equally disgusting, yet they do it with a false sense of righteousness.

If you can't see why people on the left are intolerant of fascism, you're not centrist, lol.

You are way too worked up. “Already starting to hate those who are not in it”. There is not a whiff of evidence of that in the comment you are responding to

He talks about the left with disgust, while defending the right. He picked a side alright.

> Ah yes, the "you're too stupid or unreasonable (i.e. deplorable or trash)" to reason with so I won't even try argument.

I wouldn't call anyone stupid, but I will say this. I live in the south surrounded by evangelicals, and they talk about Trump like he's a religious figure. I've tried to have rational conversations with family members and it's like arguing about the existence of God. In their eyes Trump can literally do no wrong. Maybe that's not you, but some of your defenses here feel like that.

> some of your defenses here feel like that.

Can you give me some examples of this?

Because you know exactly what people mean when they talk about fascism. Trumps fascist language and tendencies have also been well documented by scores of people and not just progressives. Instead of deflecting by debating about the meaning of the word, explain how you're ok with all of the fascists things that he says on a regular basis.

As someone else said who responded to you, they could list all the fascist statements Trump has made and you'll find reasons to dismiss them. Just like trying to convince a religious person that god does not exist.

You're completely right and it's frightening.

Let's hope we never have to find out, but so many people captivated by a conman while simultaneously crying about everyone else's position is a recipe for abuse.

Separating children from parents at the border, reverting hard fought women's right to their own body, that is the stirring of fascist behaviour.

> Separating children from parents at the border

That wasn't his main intention. It was to stop the flow of illegal immigration into the country. And after popular criticism, he reversed that policy and never enacted it again. That doesn't sound authoritarian/fascist to me. It sounds more like bending to the will of the people you govern.

> reverting hard fought women's right to their own body

And a large swath of the country believes abortion is murder. I guess for that, they are fascists in your eyes?

The term really has lost it's meaning and is just used by the Left to demonize the other side.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

But the republicans seem to be quite open and free to gun ownership by citizens for example.

Wouldn't a fascist government seek to highly control firearms take guns away from its citizens?

Advocating conspiracy theories, undermining trust in democratic process, pro-nationalist, racist, sympathetic to (if not supportive of) white supremacists, ultra-conservative and traditionalist, stoking unfounded fears of communism/marxism, etc...

Those items on your list are more opinions than facts. They are terms used by the Left to demonize their opposition.

Okay. Let's take conspiracy theories. Trump has promoted the Obama birther conspiracy, pizza gate, that the Clintons are responsible for the death of Epstein and other political opponents, that there was fraud in the 2012 election and various false claims about the 2016, 2020 and 2024 elections, various tropes about Soros etc...

It's a fact that Trump shared and promoted these. It's a fact that they are conspiracy theories.

And the Russian collusion "right under our noses" bullshit floated by the Dems turned out to be just that, bullshit conspiracy theory costing taxpayers over $30 million for the investigation. So that makes Dems fascist too then?

Firstly, conspiracy theories are just one aspect of a complex narrative that characterises fascism.

Secondly, conspiracy theories generally fly in the face of strong evidence to the contrary. But if you look at the Mueller report, it lists numerous links and collusions between the Trump campaign and Russian government. There were actual criminal offenses. There just wasn't quite enough to prove wilful criminality.

Thirdly, unless I'm mistaken, the Dems did not continue to promote claims of a conspiracy between Trump and Russia after the report was accepted.

Objectively, the use of force to eject protestors at rallies is of the fascist mindset. Trump endorses it.

The counter-argument is that a culture of violent police suppression is just modern America, and it’s not fair to tar one particular party with that particular brush.

> the use of force to eject protestors at rallies

This has happened at Harris rallies as well.

I was watching a streamer who once referred to something as “stupid” before they corrected themselves to use a different word (I don’t remember because it’s not the point). The reason for their correction was that they believe that word to be a lazy way of describing something; lots of things can be considered generally “stupid” but there’s always some underlying reason for that conclusion which will invariably be a more informative descriptor. (It takes effort to discover this reason, hence it’s “lazy” when one does not.)

I do commonly see “fascist” used to describe things in similar ways where the person seems to be expressing a general disdain for something. They do successfully convey some meaning but it’s very non-specific. Just food for thought for readers who want their opinions heard more than they want to hem and haw over the specific meanings of words.

You can read why Trump's former chief of staff, John Kelly (right wing Marine General) called him a fascist,

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/24/trump-fascis...

Many, many ways:

1. Rhetoric of an "enemy within". Trump has already made it clear that he intends to use the US military to "clean out" our country.

2. Supreme consolidation of power. Trump plans to re-enact Schedule F. Tens of thousands of federal workers will be fired, and their replacements will be required to vocalize their devotion to Trump. The bureau meritocracy system, which has been in place since the 1800s, will be removed completely. In its place, a system of political loyalty.

3. Supreme avoidance of the law. Trump is completely immune to any criminal prosecution while president, and he has made it clear he plans to use this newfound power "very aggressively".

4. Desecration of education. Within the first 100 days, the department of education will be dissolved. States will pivot to ahistorical pro-conservative education, if they provide any public education at all.

Why then are the republicans so open to lower gun ownership restrictions by the citizens?

If they were fascist wouldn't they be doing the opposite? I thought a fascist government would not allow or want the average citizens to own firearms.

This is just 1 example that pops into my mind. I can think of other examples too where the republican policies seem to be the direct opposite of what I read that a fascist government would want.

They don't, the last wave of firearm restrictions was proposed by and passed by republicans to respond to black Americans arming themselves.

Saying that wannabe dictators would fear an armed populace is an American folklore not supported by real world history. In reality, wannabe dictators usually love a disenfranchised, angry population - all you have to do is to tell them there's an evil outsider responsible for their misery. If they're armed and capable of creating more chaos? Even better. No reason to worry, you can deal with them at your leisure once you have the full state under your control.

(I'm not saying that the republican party is fascist, just that there's nothing in their gun policy that would be inconsistent with a wannabe fascist party.)

It's just the standard leftist doublethink of the past decade. Any realistic definition that labels 99% of Republicans as far right would label 95% of Democrats far right too. If their ideas were popular they would have started their own party a decade ago instead of being ground up in the DNC.

They claim "harm reduction" but that's not how just not voting works, 95% is still a super majority and anything you "win" is just tokenism at the end of the day.

It seems to me like those in power should be the ones to attempt to find common ground with those they govern.

Am I crazy to think that?

They like authoritarianism for a reason: they simply don’t care about other people. The lack of empathy is chilling.

No, it's the people who must be wrong. Surely!

That really isn't the primary alienating and divisive rhetoric from this election. It's just the bit you didn't like.

I mean, they call Harris a communist so all bets are off. Even Sanders would barely register on the left side pretty much anywhere in the western world

As a non-american, I don't see what else they could be defined as. Why try to seek a middle ground with the far right when they clearly don't want to

The positions the Republicans voiced in their campaign cam ony be summarized as far right. So applying the moniker to the party in it's current form is accurate. The party isn't the same as their voters/supporters.

In my country in Europe our most "right-wing" parties would be considered leftist in the US, so hopefully this brings into perspective just how extremely right-wing republicans are.

Which parties and country would that be?

No. Turns out I found common ground with Liz and Dick Cheney. Wouldn't have had that on my bingo card in 2016.

I’m sorry, but OP was right in calling the party - the entire party, and its supporters, and its candidates, and its institutions - far right. Because at the end of the day, many believed this was a nuanced choice about policy differences rather than what it really was: a binary choice between an imperfect Democracy, and strong man totalitarianism.

The voters made their choice clear, and those of us most impacted by GOP authoritarian policies now get to spend the next four years (at least) trying to make sure we survive attacks against us while also maybe still salvaging this grand democratic experiment.

So no, you can take that “find common ground” and shove it. We adhered to decorum for decades, even as the GOP marched ever further right and ignored, plowed through, or destroyed any and every uncrossable line or improper decorum in their path. You don’t get to try and apologize on behalf of an electorate that willfully has chosen violence, nor should we (those affected by said violence) have to tolerate their excuses.

All of the moderate Republicans were primaried out over the last eight years, the senate has a few holding on but the house has been mostly cleared out. The party is very much far right. Did you not see how many Republicans refused to certify the election in 2021? It’s only gotten worse since then.

Pretending that Republicans aren't far right is just disingenuous. The democrats are solidly right and America doesn't have a left.

Common ground?

They don't believe in climate change, want zero controls on guns, are generally anti-immigrant - even the legal immigrants are lied about e.g. Haitians in Springfield, don't believe women should have certain rights concerning their own healthcare, want to keep cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations, etc.

They are impenetrable. Yes they'd claim I'm unwilling to compromise but we're talking about different starting points - I have to get them to accept certain actual real-world events and facts as true before starting a meaningful conversation.

I watched the victory speech. He promised three things (1) only four years of him in the White House, (2) appointing RFK to eliminate vaccines and gut the health care industry (3) end current wars, so basically give his boss military control of Eastern Europe.

I don’t believe (1). The other two would mean our kids’ life expectancies just halved.

The very fact he feels the need to promise (1) says it all.

- Eliminating vaccines is a terrible idea, but public school vaccine requirements are state law in my state. RFK won't be touching them.

- Gutting the health care industry? That's not necessarily a bad thing. Wasteful health care administration (passing the buck) was something like 30% of health care costs pre-ACA, and health care is now 17.3% of GDP. Shedding 1/3 of health care costs would bring our health care expenses to the same ratio of GDP as the UK. Of course it would also cause an unemployment crisis...

The plan is to withhold federal funding for schools that require vaccines.

One example of gutting the industry (announced today): ban fluoridated water.

I'm still confused. Schools are required to require vaccines by state law.

Banning fluoridated water is a weird idea. I will have to look into the costs and benefits.

Yikes!

> Nineteen of those studies were considered to be high quality; of these, 18 reported an inverse association between estimated fluoride exposure and IQ in children. The 18 studies, which include 3 prospective cohort studies and 15 cross-sectional studies, were conducted in 5 different countries. Forty-six of the 53 low-quality studies in children also found evidence of an inverse association between estimated fluoride exposure and IQ in children.

> https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/publications/monographs/mgraph08

They're estimating a 3 to 5 point IQ drop due to fluorinated water in childhood. On that basis I would have to support switching to free mouthwash.

Pre-ACA it was hard to near impossible to get healthcare with an existing condition. Additionally, most healthcare costs are later in life. My fear is shedding costs is going to equate to only covering people who are young and healthy. But hey, it'll be cheaper.

Legal immigrants overwhelmingly voted red. "They" are minorities, white people, men and women, young and old.

Which is why the entire talking point of the Dems bringing illegals into the country to replace the electorate is a lie to enrage the base through racism. Many, possibly the majority, of immigrants coming into the US are very conservative.

>They don't believe in climate change, want zero controls on guns, are generally anti-immigrant - even the legal immigrants are lied about e.g. Haitians in Springfield, don't believe women should have certain rights concerning their own healthcare, want to keep cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations, etc.

I'd be willing to bet that the amount of conservatives that fit your description are not enough to win an election. That description is only a subset of conservatives in my experience of being a conservative myself and living around many of them.

Common ground with people who voted for someone who campaigned on hate is a pretty steep hill. Funny how Republicans are never asked to "find common ground"

Republicans stopped existing in 2016 when they found out they either have to bow down to Trump or become third-party behind democrats and trumpists. Last meaningful actions of republicans was suppressing Trump during his 2016 reign, but those people are out now. There are no republicans left in power.

Who's in charge now are not republicans. Now it's just far right believing in genius and ability of their cartoonish leader.

There is not going to be a lot of important differences in major policies (economy, diplomacy) between the two parties, IMO.

> Stop calling working people without a college education stupid and stop alienating men.

Nobody is calling anyone stupid just because of the lack of education.

However the lack of education makes people gullible and easy to manipulate. From bleach as a Covid remedy to marginal tax as a grave danger to working people - you don't have to go far for examples. And when someone does believe this sort of blatant bullshit, then, yeah, they don't come across as particularly bright individuals.

> Nobody is calling anyone stupid just because of the lack of education.

> However the lack of education makes people gullible and easy to manipulate. From bleach as a Covid remedy...

You may not realize you said it, but you said it.

So what is the takeaway here? When referring to trump supporters, follow the line of reasoning:

- Trump floated bleach as a covid remedy

- Bleach as a covid remedy is obviously stupid (we should both be agreeing on this one)

- Trump supporters support such statements from trump

- But pointing that out is "calling them stupid" and thus we shouldn't do it?

I'm genuinely curious about this because it makes up so many discussions with trump supporters in a nut shell. I don't want to condescend to them, but I also shouldn't be pointing out things that genuinely are stupid about trump, because doing so would offend them too? What should I do, just pretend all the dumb things Trump does (and that his supporters support him for) don't exist? Just so I can find common ground? (I mean, strictly speaking this is exactly what I do in polite company with trump supporters. I just pretend all the really dumb shit doesn't exist and just talk to them about policy and stuff, and in the end I end up finding that we agree on 90% of stuff and we go on our way. And they continue to support trump for reasons I don't understand.)

Realize that in most of those conversations, those actions serve to derail. That's intentional, it shuts down any rational discourse.

A good start would be looking at 3) more closely

> Trump supporters support such statements from trump

Did you ever meet a Trump supporter who used bleach? Did you ever meet a Trump supporter who thinks bleach for covid is a good idea?

If you're being honest with yourself, can you even imagine a middle-aged man drinking bleach to get rid of covid?

almost everyone I know voted for Trump, I know a lot of people, none of them ever drank bleach (as I'm writing this, I remembered I know someone who drank bleach as a little kid and had to go to the hospital, my point stands though)

> If you're being honest with yourself, can you even imagine a middle-aged man drinking bleach to get rid of covid?

Lots of them did.

https://www.poison.med.wayne.edu/updates-content/kstytapp2qf...

But my larger point is that his supporters support such statements. Not that they’re stupid enough to inject bleach (although that did happen.) It’s more that, when bringing up that he even said shit like that, trump supporters get offended that you’re condescending to them. Like, how dare you bring up that thing he actually said.

And when I say they support statements like that, it’s because they bend over backwards to find ways to convince themselves that he’s somehow not a lunatic for saying it, trying to find ways of charitably interpreting his drivel. That’s what “support such statements” means.

You believing that people actually drank bleach and weren't pranking poison control is your choice.

> they bend over backwards to find ways to convince themselves that he’s somehow not a lunatic for saying it

look, you've probably never listened to more than 5 unfiltered minutes of him speaking [0]. His supporters know he's not a lunatic, we've heard him talk for almost 10 years. Imagine a friend of yours saying something like what he said, actually imagine a normal friend of yours saying it. You wouldn't all of the sudden think he's a lunatic. Your 1st assumption would be "maybe they discussed something to do with one of the chemicals in one type of disinfectant possibly having another use" if that's a little crazy, maybe he's tired or joking or something.

Point is, in Bayesian terms, it really depends on your priors.

[0] I thought of an interesting exercise: If you commit to listening to his interview on Rogan, I'll listen to an episode of your choice that you think will enlighten me

> look, you've probably never listened to more than 5 unfiltered minutes of him speaking

I have all the god damned time. He was president for 4 years! I had to! (At least as someone who tried to follow the news then, it was unavoidable.) Most recent time I listened to him for an extended period was during the debates, where I watched the whole thing uninterrupted. We can get into the whole eating dogs thing but I'm sure you're tired of it by now.

> Imagine a friend of yours saying something like what he said

I would think they're pretty dumb, but I'd brush it off and still be friends with them.

But here's the thing: my friends aren't president of the united states. I believe we should hold him to a higher standard, especially in the beginning of a pandemic when misinformation was rampant and it was very important we didn't hear nonsense like this from our president. The whole "people say shit like that all the time" trope is the exact problem I have with trump and his supporters. I don't want our president to have the intelligence level of a typical "friend" who thinks putting bleach in your body might be a good way to fight an infection.

> If you commit to listening to his interview on Rogan

Hard fucking pass.

> Trump floated bleach as a covid remedy

This premise isn't even true. Trump did NOT float this idea.

This is something Democrats believe though. Which says a lot more about Democrats than it does about Trump supporters.

As someone replied to you: No Trump supporters actually believe in bleach as a remedy, but tons of Democrats do. What does that tell you about their respective intelligence or education?

> Trump did NOT float this idea.

Here is the exact quote:

> Right. And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you're going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds — it sounds interesting to me

So we go back to my point. Am I supposed to just pretend he doesn’t say shit like this, so that I avoid offending trump supporters?

And interestingly the word "bleach" does not show up in the quote.

And when he says "disinfectant" he means that literally as some kind of disinfecting medication. The next sentence mentioning "medical doctors" should have clued you into that.

So, now that you know that, what's wrong with what he said? (Oh, I'm well aware that the media rapidly decided disinfectant meant bleach, and then went on a rampage about that, but that's not what he said, and also not what he meant.)

Which is kind of the point isn't it? You are accusing Trump supporters of lack of knowledge but the shoe is actually on the other foot. The entire outrage was literally an invention of his opponents.

Which is also why Republicans laugh at liberals who complain about this stuff, because unlike the liberals, they heard what he actually said, and not some fictional version.

There’s that bending over backwards I was talking about in a sibling thread. Trump supporters do everything they can to twist his very obvious words to mean something that isn’t as insane. Then they turn it around and say I’m the crazy one for listening to his words.

I’m not accusing trump supporters of being stupid this, I’m accusing them of supporting what he says even though he’s obviously off his rocker.

He’s talking about putting disinfectants inside your body. He’s not using some code word for medicine. He’s talking about how fast disinfectants kill Covid outside the body, and that we should try putting them inside the body.

At this point I’m done with this entire thread, dealing with his apologists is going to give me an aneurysm. I weep for our country.

> to twist his very obvious words to mean something that isn’t

Is English not your first language? Those words aren't that hard to understand.

> He’s talking about how fast disinfectants kill Covid outside the body, and that we should try putting them inside the body.

So you're fine twisting his words to mean something else, and then accusing others of doing it?

Do you really not realize you have just then, taken his words, re-interperted them, then got mad about a fictional interpretation?

How do you not realize that everything you said about other applies FAR FAR more to you?

> dealing with his apologists is going to give me an aneurysm

Understanding spoken English makes me an apologist?

> I weep for our country.

We all do, but for very different reasons. Liberals lost the election because they can't seem to stop demonizing the other side, and people are sick of it. Perhaps take a lesson from that.

Just stop. Please. Please fucking stop. It's fucking exhausting dealing with people like you.

Let's dig up more of the quote, hopefully I won't pass out with rage having to type this shit:

> THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. So I asked Bill a question that probably some of you are thinking of, if you're totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light — and I think you said that that hasn't been checked, but you're going to test it. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you're going to test that too. It sounds interesting.

> ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN: We'll get to the right folks who could.

> THE PRESIDENT: Right. And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you're going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds — it sounds interesting to me.

He was JUST TALKING about how ultraviolet light would be great to get inside your body. If you'd like, we can talk about how FUCKING STUPID THAT IS on the face of it. Let's inject UV light into your veins somehow, sounds great.

Then he talks about "a disinfectant".

Now, your interpretation of "a disinfectant" is that he's using some strange coded word for plain old medication. After he was just talking about ultraviolet light.

So your contention is that RIGHT AFTER talking about ultravilot light being put inside your body to cure covid, he's now using "a disinfectant" to mean "a vaccine we haven't yet discovered" or some codeword for "medicine"??? How would that even make sense in this context?

He's talking about bleach. Nobody uses "disinfectant" to mean fucking anything else than "a thing you put on surfaces to kill microbes", like bleach, peroxide, etc etc etc.

YOU are the one that is twisting words to find a charitable interpretation of "disinfectant" to mean anything other than EXACTLY WHAT HE MEANT, which is some fucking bonkers tirade about how "if we can kill covid cells outside the body with things like ultraviolet light and disinfectants, then we should try doing that inside the body!" He didn't suddenly switch topics to talk about medicine.

Now let's ask snopes here. They have a big article debunking the idea that the president told people to inject bleach, so here's their opinion: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-inject-bleach-covid-...

> At no point in the media briefing did the then-president recommend that people inject bleach or other disinfectants into their bodies. He merely asked experts whether disinfectants could be injected to tackle COVID-19; a stance he later rowed back on when pressed by a journalist.

Right! He didn't say you should inject bleach, he merely opined that maybe we can inject disinfectants into people to tackle covid.

And you'll also notice that I DIDN'T SAY that he TOLD people to inject bleach. Only that he FLOATED the idea, which is EXACTLY what he did, if you take the common, everybody-in-the-english-speaking-world interpretation of "disinfectant" to mean "products that kill microbes that you absolutely should not ingest", with bleach being a perfect example.

Let's look what wikipedia says about a disinfectant, shall we?

> A disinfectant is a chemical substance or compound used to inactivate or destroy microorganisms on inert surfaces.[1] Disinfection does not necessarily kill all microorganisms, especially resistant bacterial spores; it is less effective than sterilization, which is an extreme physical or chemical process that kills all types of life.[1] Disinfectants are generally distinguished from other antimicrobial agents such as antibiotics, which destroy microorganisms within the body, and antiseptics, which destroy microorganisms on living tissue.

- Disinfectant is something you use on surfaces

- Antibiotics are things you ingest

- Antiseptics are something you use on living tissue

So you'd agree that trump meant "We should try using things we normally use on surfaces, and see what happens if we inject it"? It's just the word "bleach" you're hung up on?

Ok, then fine. Trump didn't float bleach as a covid remedy. He floated "disinfectants you'd normally use on surfaces, but injected into your body" as a covid remedy. I get it now!

> Liberals lost the election because they can't seem to stop demonizing the other side, and people are sick of it. Perhaps take a lesson from that

"You see if you were just nice to the terrorists they wouldn't have blown up the building. Perhaps take a lesson from that. We should be nicer to terrorists so they don't kill us."

Yeah no, fuck you.

But are you arguing that when people believe things that are demonstrably false, like using bleach as a Covid remedy, not because there is any evidence behind them but only because they were uttered by someone they trust wholeheartedly, and this person does not have any hint of medical training, that nobody should say they are stupid, but only quietly believe it in their minds?

If not that, then what were you trying to say?

> But are you arguing that when people believe things that are demonstrably false, like using bleach as a Covid remedy,

These are morons you read about in your news bubble. The average American is not like them.

Trump is literally one of these morons and millions voted for him. How would you classify them based on this fact, if not ignorant?

> Nobody is calling anyone stupid just because of the lack of education.

I can find you dozens of examples right now, in the press, from today. That the entire election is the fault of uneducated people.

Do show mainstream press examples pinning this on stupid people.

Not "uneducated", but expressly "stupid".

Let's not argue words. Other kind labels were deplorables, fascists, Nazis, garbage, sexists, racists, xenophobes and anti-American.

Nobody's arguing words. You offered to show "dozens of examples right now, in the press" of Trump voters being called stupid. Apparently there are none.

Overeducated people are as much manipulable, but in a different way

I've seen research shared here that suggest that more education scales with more radical political beliefs and overconfidence, for both sides of the spectrum, not just left. So you're right. Though of course more people concentrated in cosmopolitan areas with liberal cultures means more educated people lean left.

You are calling other people gullible and easy to manipulate, and yet somehow you believe that Trump actually suggested bleach.

He didn't.

Seems to me you need to look in a mirror.

They all just voted against their own economic interests to win their culture war.

Objectively, they are stupid, even the ones who went to college.

On the contrary. The voted for their own economic interests and ignored the culture war. Economics was the number one issue.

It was a reactionary response though. The fantasy of going back to low grocery prices is just that. Or are we actually going to pursue deflation?

I don't see any policy there, just platitudes.

On every objective measure the US has the best economy it has had in...pretty much ever. So they voted for "their own economic interests" by voting in a guy with plans that every economist says will be absolutely disastrous and will not only massively spike unemployment, it will lead to far greater prices for American consumers.

Trump's plan for grocery prices is to put massive tariffs on grocery imports and to deport millions of workers. There is no one with a functioning logic cortex who doesn't see the problem with this plan. But at least they can rest comfortably knowing that the Musks, Sacks and Bezos' of the world will get a killer tax break for their next yacht.

American elections are the guy in the big suburban house complaining that filling up his F350 costs a little more than it did during COVID shutdowns and thinking that somehow the guy floating insane plans is going to fix it. It's bizarre.

> On every objective measure the US has the best economy it has had in...pretty much ever.

Except the one metric that really counts: People can't afford their basic needs.

> So they voted for "their own economic interests" by voting in a guy with plans that every economist says

You mean leftside selected economists with their own agenda.

> will be absolutely disastrous and will not only massively spike unemployment, it will lead to far greater prices for American consumers.

He had the lowest unemployment numbers in decades.

>People can't afford their basic needs.

Wage growth has far exceeded inflation in the United States. Americans as a whole have never, in history, been wealthier or consumed as much. This is one of those fun "you don't know what you've got until it's gone" things where people bought into a political narrative to such a degree that in their world-leading affluence they truly think they are hard done by and wronged. I sadly feel that a lot of Americans are going to learn that there is a long, long way to fall.

>You mean leftside selected economists with their own agenda.

If you really look at everything like this, that's incredibly sad and self-deluding. Trump's economic plans are scattered spitballing that sound like something the most ignorant person just randomly contrives. There is literally nothing Trump has proposed that would in any way improve the US economy or reduce prices of anything. But they absolutely would do the opposite. No one, ever, has convincingly described how Trump is going to improve the economy. It's just random score-settling and self-enriching nonsense.

>He had the lowest unemployment numbers in decades.

In Trump's first term he was constrained from doing much of anything, and actually accomplished shockingly little policy, just coasting on Obama's policies. In this term he will have zero checks. He can actually do the crazy nonsense he has proposed, and destroy the country.

There are two possible paths ahead for the United States-

-economic calamity with zero upside where people learn that tariffs aren't some magic thing that other countries pay. Where inflation truly starts going wild again, while federal services collapse and the oligarchs reap. Musk, Bezos and crew will never have it better. Many Americans will have it much worse.

-...or..., and what Trump voters repeatedly reveal they are assuming in voting for him, he just lied about everything he says he's going to do to get a vote and actually won't do anything much at all beyond some corruption and self-serving.

Either is pretty terrible. But here we are.

The entire point of being wealthy (and USA is one of the richest countries on earth) is to be able to afford to sacrifice some extra wealth (e.g. by not working, or giving to charity, or abolishing slavery, or enforcing worker's rights) to accomplish other goals (whatever you deem good, or moral, or just fun / entertainment).

People always say this about working-class Republican votes but the exact same thing is true of many educated middle-class Democratic voters. If you work e.g. in big tech you will pay less taxes when Republicans set tax policy. Why aren't we calling tech worker Democrats stupid for voting against their own economic interests and higher taxes?

This is an honest question, I'm not American, I don't live in the US and I genuinely don't know: how has Donald Trump served the interests of "working people without a college education" during the four years of his presidency? I'm also curious to know if the Democrats have done any different.

In the interest of full disclosure I am totally guessing that neither did anything to materially improve the lives and fortunes of working-class Americans and neither Donald Trump will, nor would Kamala Harris. Working people in the US, as in the rest of the world seem to me to be shafted for good, by all sorts of economic forces that they have no control over. I'm speaking in this as a current academic but one-time unskilled, immigrant worker.

It used to be that you could feed yourself and your family with "the sweat of your brow". Not any more. Who is working to change that?

> how has Donald Trump served the interests of "working people without a college education" during the four years of his presidency?

Uneducated working class folks compete with illegal immigrants for jobs and cheap housing. During his presidency illegal immigration was lower and wages rose for the working class and housing costs were relatively stable. He’s also positioned himself as the “law and order” candidate, and crime tends to impact the working class much more than the middle/upper classes.

Mostly folks who voted for him voted on the premise that their experience of the economy was better when he was president rather than on the basis of individual policies.

> During his presidency illegal immigration was lower

Is that true? Legal immigration was lower especially during the lockdown (for obvious reasons). But the number of deportations of illegal immigrants barely changed, e.g. https://www.cato.org/blog/president-trump-reduced-legal-immi...

> wages rose for the working class

That happened. And it happened even faster under Biden.

> He’s also positioned himself as the “law and order” candidate

And yet the murder rate rose to the highest level since 1997.

> their experience of the economy was better when he was president

I feel like it might be more accurate to say "perception" than "experience".

>https://www.statista.com/statistics/329256/alien-apprehensio...

Trump’s first term and Obama’s second term were fairly steady, then you see a massive bump under Biden.

Border patrol apprehensions is very different from illegal immigration! You can't control how mnay people try to get across.

You actually can, by working the incentives. For the first three years of Biden’s administration one could show up, be apprehended, and be relatively certain that they would be released into the country, where you might be housed and fed.

Under later Trump and Biden’s current policy, you are released into Mexico.

https://x.com/SenJohnThune/status/1793001514211967288

I get and fully understand that many Americans are angry and want change, and they exercised their democratic right and pursued that change. We all need to respect that. Many things are not on the right path, and I have a feeling "DEI" and grievance farming is going to have a rough time ahead. And I get it: As a white male I honestly am tired of government being a tool to suppress white males. I am sick of living in a Western country that endlessly self-flagellates and acts like it needs to host the world in some act of contrition for success.

Having said that, it's hard as an outsider to look at the things Trump is campaigning on and not see that as not just calling "non-educated" people stupid, but he is literally relying upon it. Either his voters are extremely ill-educated, or they simply don't believe a word he says and actually make his lying a feature of his candidacy. Either aren't great.

When just about every economist says that the US economy -- quite literally the best economy on the planet -- is going to implode under the policies Trump has stated (even just the tariff proposal, not even getting into the crackpot "abolish the IRS and write on a piece of paper that crypto wipes out the debt", or Elon magically cutting 2/3rds of the federal budget, etc.), for people to then vote for Trump to "fix" the economy is not educated. Being isolationist in one of the greatest eras of peace in human history will not bring peace to Earth, it's literally guaranteed to bring war that will end up on your doorstep, etc. Nuclear non-proliferation dies with this election, and there are a lot of powers that existed under the US umbrella that are going to fire up a nuclear program, covertly or not.

I fear that many Americans just have no idea how much they have to lose. There is a sense of comfort and complacency to assume that this is the baseline. But it isn't. It can get much, much worse, very quickly.

Well said.

I find a lot of his voters seem to respond to criticisms with "Oh don't worry, he's not actually going to do those things." I think your point about making his lying a feature of his candidacy is spot on. Here's to hoping that nothing ever happens.

One more to the list: Stop trying to twist science into conforming to political or social will.

Yes! I hate that. Also, "listen to the science" people are obnoxious. There are regular scandals of people in STEM faking their results for decades and I've seen garbage labelled as research more often than I can count.

I do not trust political sciences or humanities at all. There is little to no valid method to most things they publish. And I'm not alone in that opinion in my circle.

> Quite the contrary, their job is far more important to society than mine.

I doubt it. Think about how connected the world is, you can't even apply for jobs without the internet.

Both jobs are equally important. The main difference is that you can get started doing construction without many pre-qualifications, while a construction worker may take a year or more to get the basics of computer engineering down.

What you've written is exactly what happened in the UK during the Brexit referendum. The lessons still haven't been learned.

As in, they were right calling people bigots if they wanted to get out of the eu? That definitely didn't improve uk, I've even heard about people feeling "betrayed" by the now valid tariffs that damaged their UK business

Working class people who, especially, wanted to control immigration were called bigots, uneducated, stupid, racist, etc and were ignored. Result is that they voted for Brexit. No, that didn't change anything because this was ignored by the establishment (both Labour and Conservatives) and that is still festering with the resulting rise of the Reform UK party (of Nigel Farage who's celebrating with Trump in Mar-a-Lago right now).

Here's a better analysis of the Brexit thing which was posted here yesterday. It was mostly decided by the fact that the pro-Brexit people had better marketing campaign.

https://dominiccummings.substack.com/p/q-and-a

"Better marketing" campaign is another word for saying that they understood people's concerns better and were thus able to use that to their advantage instead of insulting the people they were supposed to convince (as the Remain campaign did). This is what Cummings did to win.

Use that to their advantage by telling the truth or by lying?

> instead of insulting the people they were supposed to convince (as the Remain campaign did)

Can you point to any examples of this? I don't think the official Remain campaign did anything of the sort. Insulting the people you are trying to convert is a poor strategy, which is why I don't believe they did it.

When you say "were called bigots, uneducated, stupid, racist, etc", what I think happened was that the Leave campaign alleged that that was what the Remainers thinking/saying and it gained traction.

Your "analysis" is from someone involved in the Brexit campaign. Of course Cummings is going to say he was amazing at marketing.

Another argument would be that Vote Leave broke campaign spending rules. In countries with legally binding referenda, that would justify rerunning the referendum. But in the UK it was "only advisory".

I believe the argument being made is that calling spades spades is bad when spade is an insult and you need to convince the spades to vote for you.

Which is also why Republicans calling Democrats childish names such as "Dummy-crat" or saying "socialist" (or "commie") for all things to the left of their Overton Window doesn't convince any to their left to change their minds rightward.

I think that might be the culprit, but then you have no escape. Some post brexit interviews have been - at least for an European - quite hilarious. I feel sorry for them tho, but it's sort of a leopards ate my face situation

Indeed, and similar.

I used to live in Cambridge; I knew only one person who was a long-time UKIP voter in EU elections, who was "delighted" by the result of the referendum.

Even though I'd already been openly discussing moving to Germany ahead of the referendum, and went on an InterRail trip immediately before it to find a place to move to in the event of Leave winning, he did not comprehend that my reaction to the result included cutting him out of my life entirely.

He wanted the Cambridge to shrink, I left. That's his face leopard.

(As for intelligence: he also sometimes boasted of being in the international maths olympiad, this was Cambridge after all).

What happened is that the remain side had to fight on the side of a reality that existed and the Brexiteers made up a fantasy future that has failed to materialise.

> Brexiteers made up a fantasy future

Worse: many different and mutually incompatible fantasy futures, which they denied ahead of the referendum, and which after the referendum became a source of infighting that made all possible Brexits impossible to get past Westminster until Johnson came along and lied to everyone to get enough support to actually close a deal.

(The only time I can think of when digging a deeper hole got anywhere, even if the where was a… I guess in this metaphor: a disused basement where the stairs were missing?)

Your comment somewhat illustrates the point. It disparages those who voted for Brexit instead of trying to understand them, which is a recipe for eventual failure as we've seen.

Judging by this thread, it's still not possible to have a discussion on this...

There was nothing coherent to understand. A rag tag coalition mainly built on delusional positions.

- we can have all the trade benefits without freedom of movement (specifically denied by EU at the time, didn't materialise)

- we will have 'more trade' afterwards (fails to understand how trade works)

- we won't have to follow EU rules (in reality, we can't really diverge that much from how the EU works without incurring penalties)

- we won't have to pay anything to them / we hold all the cards / ... (we did pay for our liabilities and we definitely didn't hold the cards)

- we can become much more left wing if we leave the neoliberal EU (fails to account for the fact our country isn't particularly left wing overall)

- politicians will have to take responsibility/can't blame the EU (brexiteers keep blaming the EU even now, BJ et.al. have faced minimal or no consequences for their actions)

- we can fish again (ignores relative importance of fishing vs the actually productive economy, disregards that EU is a big market for said fish)

What do you suggest we engage with?

Well oversight on financial institutions by EU is gone, yeah you still have regulations for normal business that you have to do with EU. But super rich and corporations can drop their money in UK puppet territories and EU is not going to have pressure points. Google "UK tax havens" and I bet brexiteers were handsomely paid for their efforts by people who want that scheme to continue instead of sharing any of that money with EU.

> It disparages those who voted for Brexit instead of trying to understand them,

But why? Why is it the job of the people who are on the side of established truth who have to understand the views of the fantasists? I saw more "disparagement" from the pro-Brexit crowd than the Remainers. Why isn't it their responsibility to understand the realist position?

We told them Brexit would be a disaster. We were told we were scaremongering. It went ahead anyway, and it turned out to be awful. It was a stupid decision, and it was terrible judgment.

Why can't we tell people that some proposals are stupid? And why can't we tell people after the fact that they made a stupid decision? How is it our fault that they make bad decisions?

People were concerned about loss of sovereignty and high immigration. These are perfectly valid concerns and the Leave campaign perfectly understood that when they picked "Take back control" as slogan.

Immigration is also a big factor in the Conservatives' defeat in the general election. People felt cheated as immigration hit a record high and voted Reform UK, which handed Labour a huge majority despite actually getting fewer votes than at the previous election.

So it's quite extraordinary to see the comments here with zero reflection on why all of this happened. This is the real, dangerous divide between the well-offs in and around London and the rest of the country.

I have read that the two main issues on voters' minds in this American Presidential election were immigration and the economy, so result is not very surprising.

Loss of sovereignty in particular was a fictional concern in regards to the EU, given the structure of the EU and the relatively high power of the UK within it. The degree to which the EU should be made more democratic is precisely the degree to which it remains exactly what leave campaigners said they wanted to replace it with: a traditional boring free trade agreement in the hands of negotiators appointed by the governments of the member states.

"High" migration likewise had nothing much to do with EU membership, as the government demonstrated precisely by following Brexit with, as you say, record high immigration.

One of the other famous big concerns Leave campaigners had was the cost, which famously became the £350 million a week on the side of a bus. This number was even called out as a falsehood at the time, but it was believed by enough to make a difference.

Remainers were unable to convince the majority that the benefits of EU membership was worth the cost, financial or otherwise, regardless.

It is patently false that the loss of sovereignty is fictional. There is a loss of sovereignty by definition when the EU is a political entity with the power to enact laws. The issue is even being raised with a (growing) part of public opinion throughout Europe, and it continues today in the UK with, for instance the ECHR.

It is also patently false that immigration had nothing to do with EU membership. The surge of immigration from Eastern Europe was caused by EU membership (although initially the UK government could have imposed limits) and it also highlighted loss of sovereignty as there was nothing the government could do about it because of EU law.

Now, of course the government still controlled, and controls, immigration from outside the EU and they demonstrated that they were in fact in favour of high immigration despite what they said. This is a major cause of people voting for Reform UK instead of the Conservatives as already mentioned several times. That's why I have been saying that the result of this year's general election is a continuation of the issues at play since the Brexit referendum and even before that.

I am quite shocked by the obtuse reactions in this thread. This is still the very narrow-minded view that "we are correct they are wrong" that led to the Brexit referendum's result. Effectively, "we" are smart and correct and "they" are stupid and racist, without any attempts to try to understand the other side's point of view (which does not mean agreeing with it).

As an ironic side note, this is what "diversity" and "neurodiversity" in the workplace is all about: Bringing diverse points of view and listening to them instead of locking ourselves in our certitudes.

> There is a loss of sovereignty by definition when the EU is a political entity with the power to enact laws

If you claim that a power granted by the member states themselves, who agree to it specifically as a mechanism to enable decision making, is a "loss" of sovereignty, then democracy — all forms of it, direct or representative — also meets this description.

> and it also highlighted loss of sovereignty as there was nothing the government could do about it because of EU law.

Except for all the ways they could.

In addition to "not actively campaign to be allowed to join the treaty in the first place" (which the UK did, FOM was part of the 1957 Treaty of Rome before the UK joined), "not actively campaign for the EU to get bigger" (which the UK did), "change the rules of the EU" (which the UK did), "not join the Schengen area" (the UK did not join Schengen), and "leave EU" (which the UK did), member states also have the power to specify the rules for anything longer than a typical tourist trip in most of the west would otherwise allow anyway.

See https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A... for the pre-UK state of this rule.

See Chapter III, Article 7, section 1 for what (I think) is the current state: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:02...

This would have been a lot easier if the UK hadn't been horrified by the idea of national ID cards that the rest of the continent seems fine with.

What really stopped the UK government from doing anything much about migration — and the reason why they were really "high migration" — is the economic need for all the migrants to do all the work that the UK industries rely on but can't get locals to do for whatever reason.

This is specifically why the UK government did not impose limits to legal immigration routes and instead made empty slogans about stopping boats that didn't even constitute a rounding error compared to everything else.

> This is still the very narrow-minded view that "we are correct they are wrong" that led to the Brexit referendum's result.

I do not group all Leavers into one single category.

Unfortunately, my experience has been that the only thing Leavers have in common is the narrow-minded view that all other Leavers had the same reason for voting Leave as they themselves had. None I've encountered have been willing to engage with the observation that what they want isn't compatible with what other Leavers wanted, and when confronted with unambiguous evidence of this call each other names and denounce that alternative as "not true Brexit".

Some may call this "stupid", but not me. I think it is an unfortunate aspect of the human mind when it comes to politics, a place in which all teams are fallible and none are exempt.

Even at the time of the campaign, I was of the opinion that any who listened to the speeches by Daniel Hannan and was thereby convinced to vote Leave, was neither a fool nor a racist — he has a silver tongue, his words were not those of racism or malice.

On the other hand, those who saw Nigel Farage stand in front of his "Breaking Point" posters and thought "yes, this speaks to me"… well, one way in which I'd agree with UKIP MP Douglas Carswell is that he called the poster "morally indefensible": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_Point_(UKIP_poster)

> Effectively, "we" are smart and correct and "they" are stupid and racist, without any attempts to try to understand the other side's point of view (which does not mean agreeing with it).

From my POV, that describes every Leaver I've ever tried to discuss this with, both before and after the referendum. There was one who said "Brexit will be fine because the EU will give us a good deal", and when I said "no", rather than try to engage or find out why I thought that, replied by shouting "that proves we should leave"; on another occasion, someone else present expressed — as a concern — the belief that Brexit would make Cambridge shrink, his reply was to shout "good"; and after the referendum, he didn't understand why I stopped talking to him and moved out of the country even though I'd already been openly talking of this before the referendum — he was a Cambridge graduate who several times boasted of being in the international maths olympiad, logic goes out of the window when politics gets into the human brain.

Those Leavers who continue to discuss Brexit seem unable to understand why, despite winning the referendum, they didn't get what they thought they were voting for — when those of us who voted Remain knew that what we voted against was in the same general space as the vague incoherent mess that actually happened.

I am willing to believe that those who thought they were getting low immigration would be upset when all the other considerations got in their way; just as those who were promised no change to trading conditions were upset to discover that the EU does in fact have an external border after all and despite claims to the contrary.

> It is patently false that the loss of sovereignty is fictional.

It is not "patently" false. That is an absolutist view of the type you are complaining about. UK law still had priority: demonstrated by the fact that the UK was able to withdraw from the agreement.

> This is still the very narrow-minded view that "we are correct they are wrong"

You seem outraged by this; why? Why shouldn't we think that we were correct and you were wrong? Presumably you thought you were right and we were wrong.

Anyway, the empirical evidence since suggests that we were correct and you were wrong. Most of the predictions made by Remainers turned out to be correct. Can you accept that?

> Effectively, "we" are smart and correct and "they" are stupid and racist

No one in this thread has claimed this. The official campaign never said this. You are attacking a strawman.

> This is the real, dangerous divide between the well-offs in and around London and the rest of the country.

Above you said "It disparages those who voted for Brexit instead of trying to understand them". Why are you disparaging those who voted remain instead of trying to understand them?

I think — as a Remainer who remained so hard I responded by moving to Berlin — that "why" is "because it was a referendum and that's how those work".

It's not sufficient (or necessary) to be correct to win in a democracy, winning requires being convincing, which may be easier with the truth but is also much harder when insulting half the electorate.

Even when it's very tempting afterwards to say "we told you so".

As for how to be convincing… dunno. I'm much more comfortable with computers where I can google the errors.

> which may be easier with the truth but is also much harder when insulting half the electorate

I'm not sure this is correct. In both the Brexit campaign and the Trump election, the winning side spread insults freely, whilst meanwhile spinning a narrative that the other side were talking down to their supporters.

In both cases, the more aggressive and less truthful campaigns won, and the more "proper" campaigns that tried to reach out actually failed.

Being bolder seems to work better in the current political climate, not pussyfooting around being safe and trying not to insult anyone. I wonder if refusing to apologise and doubling down on the "garbage" comment would have worked better.

What lessons haven't been learned? Keir Starmer's Labour won the last UK elections by a landslide and the Tories got the boot. I do think your analysis oversimplifies a complex issue.

I'm not ignoring that Starmer got elected by keeping his mouth shut and his hands behind his back, but the Tories' smash-mouth politics did not win the day anyway. What I can see from where I am is that Brexit was a very special case and it's all gone back to normal now.

There was no landslide. Labour actually got fewer votes than at the previous election when it was by Corbyn!

What happens is that Conservatives voters voted for someone else, mostly Reform UK. And the reasons have been the same as what's been festering since Brexit with the added factor that the Conservatives increased immigration to record level...

Labour won with 411 seats (up 211 from 2019) and 33.3% of the popular vote (9,708,716 votes) vs. 121 seats for the Conservatives (down 251) and 23.7% of the popular vote (6,828,925 ).

YMMV but I call a lead of 290 seats and 2,879,791 votes a landslide.

It was the Lib Dems that seem to have taken most of the Tories' voters: 72 seats (up 64) and 3,519,143 votes. The latter at least checks out. Reform was up 1 seat from 2019 for 5 seats total. Not quite a big splash then.

Labour also won big in Scotland against the SNP for the first time in years (but that was rather the fault of the SNP).

Data from wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_Kingdom_general_el...

You're completely missing the point and where the votes went.

Labour got 9,708,716 votes in 2024 vs 10,269,051 in 2019. Starmer and Labour did not convince voters adn lost votes to the Greens.

What happened is that people did not vote for the Conservatives and instead voted Lib Dems and, especially, Reform UK, which got a massive 14% (3rd place and more than the Lib Dems). The Reform UK vote is because the Conservatives did not deliver on Brexit and even more importantly did the opposite of what they said on immigration, which reached record level.

The number of seats to Labour is a result of the above (Conservatives dropped so Labour candidate was elected) not because people voted Labour more than before. The surge is Reform UK.

So the same issues that have been at play in the Brexit referendum are still the key issues.

This BBC article shows how seats moved between parties. The seats lost by the Tories mainly went to Labour and the Lib Dems:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4nglegege1o

Reform's seats came from the Tories, unsurprisingly, and like you say Reform won more of the popular vote than the Lib Dems (4,117,221 vs. 3,519,143; not a wide margin) but Reform also campaigned in many fewer constituencies where they didn't have to compete directly with the three largest parties (not to mention Lord Buckethead and the Monster Raving Loony party, their nemeses). So maybe they have lots of supporters in certain areas, but only in those certain areas.

Reform is not a serious political force in the UK. They only renamed themselves from The Brexit Party, but they remain a single-issue party that appeals to a tiny minority of voters. The majority of the electorate are much more concerned with real issues like the economy, the NHS, education, law and order, and the environment. Brexit wasn't even a particularly big issue in the last elections. Even the Lib Dems, who had campaigned for a second referendum in 2019, laid it to rest this time and focused on more recent issues like sewage spills in rivers etc.

Might I also hog the mic a little while longer to say that I, personally, am mostly socially conservative, and am absolutely appalled both at the Tories and Reform, who are nothing but right-wing populists and demagogues that do not care a jot about all the things that socially conservative voters care for: jobs, order, stability, lawfulness, the economy, family, etc. And let's not forget that it was Margaret Thatcher's Tories that got the UK into the EU, and did so because it was beneficial to the economy, trade, and the stability of international politics. Exciting the EU was exactly antithetical to conservative ideals: it was a radical act of self-mutilation.

Labour are now the conservative party, the party of business and fiscal responsibility (and sitting on your hands while you kick the can down the road) and that's why they took all the Tories' votes: because the socially conservative constituency got fed up with the Tories' antics and, the Brexit fever having passed, wanted to go back to order and stability.

> Reform is not a serious political force in the UK. They only renamed themselves from The Brexit Party, but they remain a single-issue party that appeals to a tiny minority of voters.

In the 2024 UK general election, they got 14.3% of the vote. I don't think that's a "tiny minority". And if that's a "tiny minority", then the 12.2% of the vote Lib Dems got is an even tinier minority.

The problem that Reform has, is that 14.3% is spread too thin geographically. Reform got 5 MPs from 14.3%, Lib Dems got 72 MPs from 12.2% – because Lib Dem support is more concentrated in particular constituencies, mostly in southern England.

This is a side-effect of first-past-the-post. If the 2011 Alternative Vote referendum had succeeded, then Reform would have likely ended up with more seats in 2024; although even with alternate vote, the seats-per-vote advantage that Lib Dems have over Reform due to their greater geographic concentration would have still existed, albeit somewhat attenuated. A more fully proportional system, such as those used by the devolved legislatures of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, would have attenuated that advantage even further–although those systems are still region-based, so even they may not completely eliminate it.

>> In the 2024 UK general election, they got 14.3% of the vote. I don't think that's a "tiny minority". And if that's a "tiny minority", then the 12.2% of the vote Lib Dems got is an even tinier minority.

I don't disagree. I argued that the Labour win was a landslide, not that the Lib Dems' result was one. Me and the OP were disagreeing about where the Tories' voters went: Reform, or Labour. I argued they mostly went to Labour and my reasoning is that Labour are now the party that best represents socially conservative voters.

I agree that FPTP is skewing results and Reform might have fared better in a more representative system. Then again, the Lib Dems may also have got more votes. There was a lot of discussion in the elections about "voting strategically" to oust the Tories and avoid splitting the "liberal" vote. Maybe with a more representative system that wouldn't be an issue anymore.

FPTP is an embarrassment certainly. I don't vote in the UK, I'm a bloody foreigner, but if the system was more balanced I might even consider becoming a citizen. It's stupid that I've lived in this country for so long and I don't get to say where it goes politically. Although that would require me to swear an oath of allegiance to the king and I'm a republican. It's a tough call.

> I argued that the Labour win was a landslide

There is no official definition, but generally (in a UK context) a "landslide" is a party winning a big House of Commons majority – like the Tories in 1983 and 1987, or Labour in 1997. And by that standard, 2024 was a landslide – Labour won almost as many seats as 1997, and beat both of Thatcher's records.

What I think what complicates things: both Thatcher's and Blair's landslides were big majorities backed by a big percentage of the vote (> 40%). And since the two things go together, even though quasi-officially it is about the first not the second, it is understandable how some people take the second to be part of the definition as well. For 1983, 1987, 1997, it doesn't make a difference. But then suddenly in 2024 it does – Starmer won a big number of seats, but only 33.7% of the vote – only slightly more than Corbyn's 32.1% in 2019, and actually in absolute terms over 500,000 fewer votes. This is because turnout dropped significantly in 2024 compared to 2019.

> Me and the OP were disagreeing about where the Tories' voters went: Reform, or Labour.

Given the drop in turnout, I think quite a few Tory voters just decided to stay home.

> I argued they mostly went to Labour and my reasoning is that Labour are now the party that best represents socially conservative voters.

That's not numerically possible – the Tory vote dropped by 19.9 percentage points, while Labour only gained by 1.6 points and Lib Dems by 0.6 points. A small minority of Tory voters switched to Labour, but any more than that and Labour would have got a bigger vote share than they actually did. The Tory voters must have gone somewhere else – and given Reform got 14% of the vote, it is obvious very many of them went to Reform.

That would be true if there was a change with that population. Right now the numbers are that Trump won with slightly less votes than when he lost in the 2020 elections; and Kamala lost with significantly less vote than Biden got in the 2020 elections. There are almost 20 million of voters that didn't show up on this year election that showed for the 2020.

What I don't get is how the bar for the Democrats seems to be so much higher than for Trump. Sure, "the typical man" is more easily validated by Trump than Harris, but at the same time Trump says much worse things about women than Harris about men. I can see how the Harris seems more "elitist" in a way than Trump, but to me that seems like a subtle negative versus Trump's long list of very obvious flaws.

How does the hatred for the Democrats get so big?

Trump doesn't alienate a specific group of hardworking Americans who turn out to vote. The people who are turned off by him largely don't vote at all.

> but at the same time Trump says much worse things about women than Harris about men

One would think so, but Trump's talk about women is just how society in general talks about women. As sad as it is, women are used to that rhetoric.

> How does the hatred for the Democrats get so big?

Multiple high profile members of the Democratic Party actively demonize rural Americans and especially men.

You're saying that Trump won because US society is misogynistic?

In essence, yes. I'm saying that Trump's narrative on women is no worse than societies default. Women experience far worse things than macho talk. It takes more to alienate a lot of them.

It feels like you're balancing two conflicting notions here:

1. Stop calling average people ignorant.

2. Average people are misogynistic.

I'm politically the opposite of the person you're replying to, but these two notions are correct and not contradictory. Average people are ignorant and misogynist, and we should acknowledge this and talk about it, but not to their face. If you're not the direct target of the ignorance or misogyny, you should explain to them why their assumptions are false in a dumbed-down way, not using university-level language. Calling people ignorant directly will get them defensive and emotional. They will think they are being attacked because they are a man.

Of course, for people who are directly targeted by the ignorance and misogyny, it's their right to directly call it out, but they might not call it out at all, because they would be targeted further.

The difference between what they are and what you should call them. Getting voted in asks for coddling your potential base.

Trump talks shit about everyone—somehow all his supporters ignore that he has trashed each and every one of them at some point

We call that "double standard" and it's top on the list of common fallacies. The lack of education, whether I demonize it or not, definitely has a saying in its spread. And dismantling the department of education won't help getting people more educated in the following elections.

I think the difference is that Harris (less so than Clinton but to some extent) was seen as representing a liberal consensus that men, particularly white, heterosexual men are 'over', that the 'future is female', etc.

Trump is just Trump. A rhetorically violent, deeply unpleasant convicted rapist, but not the vanguard of an explicitly misognist movement. At least not one thats culturally hegemonic. So while American progressives may label Trump voters sexist or racist, the overwhelming majority of them don't see themselves that way. Meanwhile, a highly vocal minority of progressives do actively demean men, while people, straight people etc, and have for a decade. They've enacted DEI practices, and scholarship and funding practices that exclude men from fair participation in the workforce, education and the arts. As efforts to correct historic imbalances in that participation. At the same time, they've ignored how male participation in higher education has dropped off, the epidemics of alienation and underemployment affecting men.

Edit: Just to clarify I'm addressing the question - not advocating Trump, or suggesting that life for men or white people or straight people is in fact materially worse. Just pointing out people strongly dislike being disliked, actively biased against and demeaned and this does in fact affect their voting preferences.

Yes, being a woman in power is clearly a political statement in this country.

I'm genuinely at a loss as to how that connects to anything I wrote. It's not Harris' gender that was the issue - to the extent that the position I'm taking helped shift the dial. It's the perception that she would continue the policies and forward the ideological perspectives listed above. It doesn't help that she seems extremely disingenuous and politically opportunistic. Trump is of course both these things - but conservatives seem to care less about that, likely because of the redemption narrative built into Christianity. You can be as much of a villain as you like provided you push that button. It's worth noting that Obama and Bill Clinton both pushed their Christianity when campaigning, and that appeal wasn't lost on evangelicals. Progressives, it would be difficult not to admit, are pretty adamantly set against redemption currently.

Some people definitely think it is.

> convicted rapist

You may think you mean, or maybe you did not, the accurate description: adjudicated rapist. And that difference right there, between adjudicated and convicted, and all of the other ambient hoaxes, is in big part what the referendum yesterday was about.

Ask yourself how long it was between late 2017 and when you found out the "fine people" hoax was actually a hoax. Or if just now, whether you knew that even Snopes confirmed the hoax that Kamala wantonly repeated (as if it were true) in the debate is indeed a hoax.

Most normal people don't see the difference between adjudicated rapist and convicted rapist as an innocent mistake but as something that those who push such hoaxes -- rather than innocently parrot them out of ignorance -- should be put behind bars for in response to the damage they do this great union of states.

That is a distinction without a difference. It's not a hoax to acknowledge that a man credibly accused and judicially 'adjudicated' of raping multiple women is a rapist.

"I moved on her very heavily. In fact, I took her out furniture shopping.

She wanted to get some furniture. I said, “I’ll show you where they have some nice furniture.” I took her out furniture —

I moved on her like a bitch. But I couldn’t get there. And she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look...

I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything...

Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything."

- https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/donald-trump-tape-tran...

> and judicially 'adjudicated' of raping multiple women is a rapist.

Except for the hard material fact that he did not rape her.

I dont know about the USA. But I know from personal experience, that COVID politics destroyed my trust in left-leaning parties. I voted left until 2020. I will never give them my vote again, ever.

[flagged]

To be fair, RFK Jr believes that vaccines are linked to autism and wants to ban fluoride in drinking water because it's "linked to cancer". It's very worrying that he could be setting health policy.

I could have put it better, I think. But that's basically what I was driving at. Whether I'm off base calling him a 'weird crank', or have to behave as if he has more legitimacy (which will be difficult, though I could try harder), he's very much on record as wanting to ban and stop many things that in his mind are like terrible crimes against citizens.

I'm not uncomfortable lumping a lot of that together as 'medicine'. For instance, we know vaccination in general raises his ire, but he also seems to object to pasteurization. If he remains in a position to be able to ban that practice, it could be a significant driver of health-related issues. And I do think he's in a position to be able to ban or at least substantially punish the practice of pasteurization, vaccination, flouridation… it's unclear how much influence the man will have, but it could be a great deal.

You can't post like this on HN, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. We have to ban accounts that do this, and have warned you before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36384536). I'm not going to ban you right now because it feels unfair to single out one person, but please fix this so we don't have to in the future.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

But most people's anecdotal experiences with COVID amount to "It was just like having the flu, I don't see why they made such a big deal about it and banned Twitter accounts for saying things that line up with my experience"

Sorry, which of those measures were effective? People really live in completely different world is amazing.

you know that everyone is still getting Covid over and over and over again every year, right?

COVID has mutated to become far less fatal. At the time, social distancing and mask wearing were effective ways to reduce incidence and prevent hospitals from getting even more overwhelmed.

Except looking at when the waves occurred and when measures were in place they didn't do anything.

> This systematic review and meta-analysis suggests that several personal protective and social measures, including handwashing, mask wearing, and physical distancing are associated with reductions in the incidence covid-19.

https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj-2021-068302

A reduction in everyone getting it anyway? and still getting it over and over forever? I’m so glad I was under curfew for three years.

> and injecting disinfectant

This one I know is a straight up lie, because I remember where it came from: Trump asked an expert if it was possible to use disinfectant inside the body, was immediately shut down with a simple "no", and dropped it. Audio of the conversation was leaked and immediately twisted into "drink bleach", ignoring everything else about the conversation.

Also UV light treatment actually exists, just not for this purpose. It's a completely normal thing to ask once you learn UV kills viruses.

In this snippet I hear no „No“ to the disinfectant, he is just suggesting it an seems to go on: https://youtu.be/zicGxU5MfwE?feature=shared

I would be interested in learning what happened during COVID that led to this, if you have the time to talk about that. No worries if not, of course.

My impression is that it's not about what Kamala Harris (or most Democrats) said, but the fact that the Republicans were able to create the perception that there are strong movements which hate "whites" and which hate "men" (in various combinations), and that voting Democrats would help those movements. Apparently, they were able to convince enough non-white men and white women that Trump will be better for them.

It doesn't. Part of what you're seeing is just straight up cheating. Florida wouldn't allow election observers. It might take a little while to sink in, but American elections are more or less running like Russian elections at this point, and these results are what you get when it's not honest. Sometimes it's like this, and sometimes the leader figure is said to get like 99% of the vote, when he doesn't feel like playing coy about it. It's up to him, not you.

America started when it rebelled against being ruled. I'd say that's not entirely off the table. First it has to become clear that we're getting ruled, not represented.

Wait who cheated when? Maybe you should go to the capital and protest

Not a chance. Not nearly as safe as when the Jan 6 guys went. This is no time to be a hothead. I'm minding my own business, I'm not an idiot.

The simple fact is, Trump is a rorschach/inkblot test.

He is everything people claim and nothing at all. He says so much bullshit constantly that you have to just ignoring or discounting shit he says. So he reflects what you believe.

I understand calling people stupid is not a strategy to convince someone.

But it’s not like that is why someone votes for Trump, right? It’s maybe more of a way to disincentivize conversions back.

I… really wish there had been a primary though. Biden deserves to be hated for the rest of his life for this (along with all of his other decision making)

I wish there had been a primary, too. The DNC did a massive disservice to the American people.

there was no time to have a real primary with biden dropping out when he did if she still wanted to end up on ballots.

They should have had a primary instead of having a ritualistic anointing of Biden. The reason Biden had to drop out is because he was there when he shouldn't have been.

I can vaguely understand fixing a primary for H. Clinton, but for Biden? One of the things Biden ran on in 2020 was a vague indication that he would leave after one term.

Yes. It was Biden and his team’s decision to prop him up til it was too late.

Biden promised to be a one term president, but his ego craved more power. He will go down along with RBG for helping hand democracy to fascists.

There was a primary, Biden won it. Maybe you wanted a second primary after he stepped down? That would have been tough.

Which candidate was unwanted?

Harris. She was dead last in the 2020 primary.

The one that didn't win their primaries.

That‘s the fault of capitalism. Which the right supports even harder than the democratic party (which also completely supports it).

I couldn't agree more. This "my political enemy is stupid" approach is very divisive and will not lead to good outcomes.

How come? Trump’s just won an election with it.

I realized the stupidity argument during covid first, and it all came from the left. So much contempt, a reason why I no longer can identify with liberals. In fact, I am disgusted by what I remember from 2020/21.

There does seem to be a real double standard here.

Yea Kamala should not have been the candidate. She was tied to Biden who was associated with inflation which I think really decided this. I'm not sure the rest of your comment has that much to do with it

> She was tied to Biden who was associated with inflation which I think really decided this.

What about the rest of the world who've also been experiencing the same?

It's a very shortsighted take, and we've seen the same in the UK where Liz Truss 6 weeks as PM has taken the blame for global inflation in the court of popular opinion

Of course, its not logical, but voters "feel" they were better under trump without realizing inflation was a global phenomenon. This was also a failure of Dem messaging.

"Associated with" not "caused by".

This is why we call Trump's voters "stupid", the US is still under Trump's tax plan until 1/2025. So if someone has an issue with taxes, it's not Biden's fault even though he is in office.

I know this and I'm not even American

Inflation and taxes are two different things.

Inflation was caused by the Covid stimulus of 2020, and the mountains of free money printed that year (which is why it hit the entire world - every government did the exact same thing). Last I checked, Biden wasn't president at the time...

I merely pointed out that taxes and inflation are different things and that the respondent said one, where they were replying to the other.

Making it a left or right issue makes no sense given the content of my post was to point out the mismatch in arguments.

EDIT: This post is the same thing fwiw.

Given that Trump's economic policies are primarily the cause of inflation in the US, not sure what your point is. He printed and gave away 8 trillion dollars when combined with his tax cuts for the wealthy and people wonder why the cost of everything went up. Corporations across the planet were the beneficiaries of corporate welfare as governments printed money to battle COVID, and then they pocketed the profits and told their employees that they couldn't afford to give them raises.

Doing stock buybacks with government stimulus is next level evil shit - but there were zero penalties for doing it, so why not?

Eh, if ONE builder stops working nothing happens. Likewise if ALL researchers stop working… we don't feel it the next day, but it will be felt.

Was Kamalas campaign demeaning to the working class and alienating men?

I was under the impression that the Dems were doing more for the working class, and that Trump was alienating women.

[flagged]

Yep. Hence the recent push to kneecap the education in States - be it book bans, forced Bible studies or other eye-popping regressions. Watching this unfold across the pond was a bewildering experience.

I would have thought young people having access to the internet would have allowed them to educate themselves and see through bullshit, but apparently not.

I really do think this is the beginning of the end for the US. At least I have front row tickets to the show.

I think this is the middle of the end. The beginning of the end was probably 2000-2001.

Who are you calling uneducated? Just because your have an opinion doesn’t make you an authority on what people under other life conditions need to lead a successful life. Speak for yourself.

> Just because your have an opinion doesn’t make you an authority on what people under other life conditions need to lead a successful life.

That has nothing to do with anything. Every single person voting on the economy for Trump, blaming Biden for inflation is an example of a lack of education. Just for one example.

There's a reason college educated people vote so differently to non college educated people on average.

Again, it’s an opinion. It doesn’t make it so just by having it.

It's an opinion the way gravity an opinion, and those who disagree have an opinion the way thinking the earth is flat is an opinion.

The difference is one is backed by hard data.

It's a good marketing case-study.

Costed policies that are feasible and attainable in one-term? Boring

Promises of fantastic wealth and glory? Much more appealing

Same thing the Brexit campaign failed on.

Depends on who you ask. Both sides demonize the other, but say they don't. Republicans are just much, much better at it. The ads and rhetoric are all designed to solicited emotional responses from the constituency, putting them in a very easy position to "Other" anyone who disagrees. If you can make your followers feel like they are disenfranchised then it's a simple matter to control them by promising to be the solution for their discontent.

Project 2025 also helped, since Democrats answered it with shock and horror instead of countering with their own improved version. Say what you will about the depravity contained within those pages, but Trump voters hold it up as "at least it's a plan" without having read it, much like their other beloved book, The Bible. Knowing that, it was quite easy for the Trump campaign to whip up support.

As much as I want to end with some pithy comment like "manipulation is a hell of drug," I can't. Half the country just got permission to put their ugly truths on display and they certainly did not disappoint. I have trouble laughing about that anymore.

> Republicans are just much, much better at it.

Isn't it the Democrats who sling words like nazi, fascist, racist, deplorable, trash?

When one guy is talking about domestic military deployments and shooting his political antagonists, and it’s not clear that the courts will stop him, then I do indeed think the F” word is in order.

The rest of it is self evident, but I’m not going to be the one to say it out loud.

The Kamala campaign had one and only one major problem.

COVID stimulus and an economic slowdown from 2020 caused four years of inflation in the entire world, and people see the price of milk going up and punish the incumbent (not even the person who was in charge in 2020.

At which point, it doesn't matter how you campaign, or if the opposing candidate is actual Satan, nobody's going to vote for the incumbent.

It also doesn't help that the press normalized actual insanity that would not have been tolerated from anyone else, and collectively pretended that it's normal and reasonable behavior.

It does matter how you campaign. Very few people live without access to information beyond the price of milk. If you see that global inflation is a thing and that it is a topic of importance for potential voters you could acknowledge that it exists and work on your messaging/make it look like you're trying to do something to fix it.

The messaging that really gets through to people who can't understand that is naked, blatant lies. It worked with Brexit, and it worked yesterday.

Flooding the country with millions of undocumented workers to compete with Americans is not a favor to the working class. That is a hand out to corporations.

I can’t find any statistical reporting to back there being millions more undocumented immigrants coming into the country in the last 4 years. Data-backed reporting indicates that we’ve had ~11 million undocumented workers since the 2005 with little change until 2020. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-k...

Any chance you know where to find some more?

Look at monthly border patrol contacts with people crossing the border illegally. About 55k/mo recently with much higher numbers in 2023.

Ah, yes, because all those people are working at Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft.

It's a handout to anyone buying those services and a loss to anyone selling them (trade workers).

Companies can't "just hire" illegal immigrants in most states - the majority of the ones Trump won.

It seems that most undocumented workers are doing jobs left unfilled by Americans, for example farm labor.

They’re unfilled because they don’t want to pay competitive wages.

I take no position on why these jobs are unfilled by Americans. But trying to claim these jobs are stolen or taken by undocumented workers (as implied by the comment to which I originally responded) is just wrong. If I assume you are correct (and it is in fact a quite plausible theory), I would allege the jobs are being stolen from American workers by the employers. Certainly the employers are relatively more profitable as a result of their shenanigans, if you are correct.

It's also a hand out to middle class, who cosume a lot of services provided by illegal imigrants (landscaping, renovation, cooking in restaurants etc.). The Dems kept the price of maintaining a nice lawn low.

It was not, but the Trump campaign continuously lied about it. Trump lied and lied and lied about the democratic party being anti-men, anti-cis, anti-Christian, Kamala being low IQ, and whatever other stupid shit he could think about, but somehow it's Harris fault for being "too divisive" (not sure how).

Trump is the incarnation of a thin-skinned bully, he allows himself the worst but will cry as loud as possible on the first sign of a backslash.

If people who voted for him are not stupid, they certainly act like it.

> If people who voted for him are not stupid, they certainly act like it.

Being stupid is not a prerequisite to being apathetic.

And I view Kamala as a fake, policy flip-flopping, question dodging word salad spewer.

> If people who voted for him are not stupid, they certainly act like it.

This attitude of "you must be stupid if you don't see things my way" I expect on Reddit, but am disappointed to see it here.

> if you don't see things my way

This attitude of putting words in people's mouths I expect on Reddit, but I am disappointed to see it here.

They literally said anyone who voted for Trump, which they obviously disagree with, is stupid or acts like it

Then stop acting like it.

They said, "People who support Trump". They never said, "People who disagree with me". Those are your own words. And there's a great deal of difference between those two clauses.

I understand you want to shield yourself from criticism, by pretending you're merely in the "people who disagree with" camp and not in the "people who support Trump" camp. But trying to do that while putting words in someone's mouth lowers the quality of discourse here. And then to try claiming moral superiority by citing "This is HN, not reddit" is just ... transparently pointless.

Also, you ruin your own argument by proving your parent correct.

> They said, "People who support Trump". They never said, "People who disagree with me". Those are your own words. And there's a great deal of difference between those two clauses.

They are closely related and I don't see as much difference as you do but okay, they are different clauses. I also believe saying someone is stupid for supporting Trump is wrong. You can disagree with a person's vote, try to point out why you think they are wrong, just ignore them but calling someone stupid has no benefit except maybe it makes the insulter feel good about their own superiority.

> lowers the quality of discourse here.

but calling me and over half the country stupid adds to the quality of discourse?

> "This is HN, not reddit" is just ... transparently pointless.

HN has clear guidelines about this [0] and people here generally adhere to them. By saying this is HN, I'm appealing to the higher standard espoused in these guidelines. Do you think those guidelines are pointless?

> I understand you want to shield yourself from criticism, by pretending you're merely in the "people who disagree with" camp

You understand incorrectly. If you look at my recent comment history, it's pretty easy to see I'm Republican and voted for Trump.

> Also, you ruin your own argument by proving your parent correct.

I don't understand your logic here. How did I prove the parent correct? Seems like just another personal insult on your part.

I look forward to your responses to the above.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Be kind." "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

> They are closely related and I don't see as much difference as you do but okay

They are nowhere close but of course you can't see that so okay.

> I also believe saying someone is stupid for supporting Trump is wrong.

Of course, Trump supporters are known for being poor employers of reason and introspection.

> try to point out why you think they are wrong

This list is so long that it's pointless to point this out in every conversation with a Trumper, but your parent did actually try.

> just ignore them

This is dangerous, to all humanity. At best, it's tolerance of the intolerant.

> but calling someone stupid has no benefit except maybe it makes the insulter feel good about their own superiority.

I strongly doubt your parent felt good about it. There's nothing good about calling a Trumper "stupid", because it does nothing to help the situation. Trumpers don't listen to reason; I'm sure your parent knows this. It's far more likely your parent spoke out of sheer frustration, which I fully understand, having had my own faith in humanity tested by this whole ordeal, and it hasn't even begun its "revenge run".

> but calling me and over half the country stupid adds to the quality of discourse?

1. Spoken by itself, probably not. But your parent didn't just call Trumpers stupid. They first explained their reasoning. Within a greater context where that's precisely the point being discussed: "How Trumpers are stupid."

2. More like "quarter of the country". Half your country didn't even vote.

> By saying this is HN, I'm appealing to the higher standard espoused in these guidelines.

If that's all you were doing, that'd be fine. But to do that while putting words in people's mouths? That's disingenuous, at best, and transparently so.

> Do you think those guidelines are pointless?

And there we go again with the putting words in people's mouths.

> it's pretty easy to see I'm Republican and voted for Trump.

I don't see how this, in any way whatsoever, proves I "understood incorrectly".

> How did I prove the parent correct?

I've already explained in this thread above. Twice. I don't see the point in trying a third time, especially when ... <see above>.

> Seems like just another personal insult on your part.

It wasn't. It was an appeal to do better, since, as you said, "This is HN". Maybe I understand why you feel that way, though. I am, after all, somebody that disagrees with you on sth, so of course I must be out to "get you". Rest assured, I am not out to "get you".

----

> [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Be kind." "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

Since you quoted this, let me leave you with one thing to ponder on: Just how spectacularly poorly your candidate (i.e., Trump) does on these guidelines.

You don't see how "People who support Trump" and "People who disagree with me" are closely related? The former is a subset of the latter.

>> I also believe saying someone is stupid for supporting Trump is wrong.

> Of course, Trump supporters are known for being poor employers of reason and introspection.

To clarify, I don't think that anyone should should call anyone else stupid for any reason. It's just ad hominem.

I'll address your characterization of Trumpers as being poor employers of reason and introspection below.

> that's precisely the point being discussed: "How Trumpers are stupid."

Again, I have a problem with the ad hominem. Why not "wrong" or "misguided"? Why take it to the personal insult level? You mention about the reasoning for using "stupid" is sheer frustration. You also mention maintaining the quality of discourse here. "stupid" does not do that. Maybe it helps you vent your frustration, but kicking a dog does that for some people and we can agree that being frustrated doesn't justify that.

It just serves to demonize and dehumanize people on the other side.

>> Do you think those guidelines are pointless?

> And there we go again with the putting words in people's mouths.

I didn't put words in anyone's mouth. I asked a question. And the reason I asked it is you don't seem to have a problem with calling a certain class of people stupid which clearly violates the guidelines. So it's reasonable to question if you value those guidelines.

>> it's pretty easy to see I'm Republican and voted for Trump.

I don't see how this, in any way whatsoever, proves I "understood incorrectly".

This is your understanding: "I understand you want to shield yourself from criticism, by pretending you're merely in the "people who disagree with" camp"

That is incorrect. I do not want to shield myself from criticism by pretending I'm merely in the "people who disagree with" camp. As seen in my past comments, I do not pretend I'm not a Republican/Trump supporter.

>> How did I prove the parent correct?

>I've already explained in this thread above. Twice. I don't see the point in trying a third time, especially when ... <see above>.

I ask for clarification of something you said and this is your response? I proved the parent correct about what? Where have you explained this twice? You don't have to explain it again. Just copy and paste it. Doesn't have to be both times. Just one is fine.

When someone doesn't understand something, it's not always their fault. Communication is a two way street. Sometimes it is the communicator that is unclear in their messaging.

Now to address your comment about Trumpers having poor reasoning and instropective abilities I'll choose a few hot button topics in this election cycle and go through my reasoning on them.

- Immigration and border security

On day one of the Biden/Harris administration, they reversed most of the Trump era border policies. This resulted in an unprecented level of illegal border crossings. Some of these that crossed went on to rape and kill American girls/women , take over whole apartment complexes and some are terrorist bent on US destruction [0]. Furthore, these illegals have cost US taxpayers untold millions to suppor them.

After three and half years, right before the next election cycle Biden finally reinstated Trump era border restrictions and the flow of illegals stemmed. And Harris who years before said building a wall was stupid, in a recent interview suddenly says she is open to bulding the wall.

My questions are why did Biden/Harris reverts Trump border policies in the first place only to reinstate them three and a half years later when Harris was up for election?

To me, it's just unreasonable to open a countries borders like that and basically ignore immigration laws. Why let millions of immigrates into the country illegally like that? It's akin to saying "I don't need walls or doors for my house. It's ok that anyone can come in as they please. That's totally ok for me and my family"

There are legal paths to enter the US and become a resident. Those need to be followed an enforced.

So, am I stupid and lack reasoning skills for believing the above?

- June 6th Capital insurrection.

It was an insurrection against the governemnt. All the protesters who stormed the capitol should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

The question is did Trump lead this insurrection? I don't think he directly lead it. That would require that he told them something to the effect "let's go to the capitol and take over". Did he cause it? I think there are valid arguments on both sides of that debate.

In any case, this was a really bad move by Trump and a huge blight on his record.

Was it enough to keep me from voting for him? Obviously not. To me, Trump is the lesser of two evils. I didn't vote for Trump in the primaries. I really wish he wouldn't have won so I could have a better choice.

But Harris's policies I'm deeply opposed to. In terms of character, I think she is fake and insincere flip flopper with no real convictions and thus can't give straightforward answers to questions and spews word salads instead. Do I like Trump's character? Mostly not. He is deeply flawed. There are some good qualities I see in him (that I know you'll disagree with me on.). He deeply wants to see the US succeed and thus has sincere passion and deep conviction. For example, he's the only candidate that will stand up to and call out China's trade bullshit, their unfair trade practices that have screwed over America for decades. The tariffs he threatens are for the purpose of forcing China to the negotiating table. The past decades of American presidents' hemming and hawing to China have done nothing to change their behavior.

So I choose based mostly on policy rather than character.

Since you mentioned introspection, I'll leave you this to reflect on: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42062965

[0] https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-forum-online/counter-ter...

The working class and young men (all young people really) have been completely left out of the economic recovery. Harris saying she would change nothing about what Biden has been doing was a huge problem. She tried to address it later.

At the end of the day, "it's the economy, stupid".

Both represent the working class, just different subsets. Rural working class vs urban working class.

But Scholz, Esken and von der Leyen are really popular! Oh wait, we're talking US politics here, my bad ...

If one handyman or one farmer or one trucker stopped working, no one would really care. If all CS researchers stopped working, I'd wager people would care, just as they would if handymen/farmers/truckers stopped working.

I thing OP point is that if the trucker stopped working people and businesses will be impacted that day (before he gets replaced, easy with trucker, not with labour). The impact will be more direct and tangible way than, say, a CS researcher not showing up this morning.

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