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Comment by kelseyfrog | Hacker News Reader

Half of politics can be explained by framing it around the idea that for a sizable chunk of the population the last 50 years have inflicted a wound to status. The civil rights era changes, demographic changes, and the consequences of the Triffin dilemma leave a large group of people with the living memory that they had more status in the past than they do now.

The natural urge to find a cause results in externalizing blame, elites being one targeted group. It makes sense that lashing out at them is an attempt to heal the status wound, even though the chance that this succeeds is zero.

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Mate, not everything in the world is some 4D chess conspiracy. I think it's more likely they just don't want to get send to Guantanamo Bay or El Salvador tbh.

If I'm reading the user right, and I'm not positive I am, they're more framing the people who support the administration's (reprehensible) agenda as being on a revenge kick for losing a small amount of their original privileged status.

I think it's a fine argument to make, and I'd even agree -- it's just put really obliquely.

You read it correctly. In an attempt to appear less partisan, I made the writing too oblique. My apologies.

A revised version would read:

Over the past half-century, shaped by civil-rights gains, demographic shifts, and the dollar’s reserve-currency burdens, one once-dominant segment of the population has felt its social standing erode. Its members still remember when the political, social, and economic order tilted decisively in their favor.

Politics now orbits the "status wound" this group carries. To soothe it, they cast blame outward, at elites, newcomers, or any symbol of the new order. Each target offers momentary relief, but none can restore what was lost.

Edit: I misinterpreted the parent comment, apologies.

He's not referring to the scientists. He's referring to a large subset of supporters of the present administration, stereotypically lower middle class white men. They have seen other groups (women, black people, Hispanics, gay people, etc) gaining rights over the last half century or so, while they are no better off and often worse off.

This group also has a grievance against scientists, whom they see as complicit because of their campaign against climate change, among other things.

The present administration is heavily weighted towards supporting the backlash from this group. This weighs heavily on scientists, and is seen as a win for the former group.

The parent is saying the status wound is being experienced by those doing the firing and detaining.

Another way to state this is that those in power today are out for revenge because they feel as though the past ~50 years has been punishing to them. So they are lashing out against those who’ve gained in that period of time. Science and intellectualism in general is one of those gains.

Though just to be very clear here, at every step of the way this group has voted for and voraciously supported the very same elites that have been pushing hardest on the accelerator pedal for some of their problems. The Dollar's status as a reserve currency was not itself a burden. The problem was caused by the Republican Party's continually trumpeted fake "fiscal responsibility" whereby the surplus was still centralized (monetary inflation), but the proceeds were handed to Wall Street to bid up asset bubbles instead of being spent on policies that would have helped Main Street.

> In an attempt to appear less partisan

This doesn't really work when you're trafficking in "explanations" about how Group A thinks invented by Group B for the purpose of delegitimizing Group A's disagreements with them.

Status wounds are legitimate.

These status-injured people don't realize that status isn't a zero sum game. You can give people who have previously been discriminated against civil rights and it doesn't take status away from the previous in-group.

Counterpoint:

You’re displaying a form of racism by portraying this as about “lost status” rather than the decreasing material well-being of the public and the collapse of technocratic systems benefitting people in a regime of inflated credentials.

Your theory doesn’t explain, eg, why Trump is more popular than a typical Republican with minorities. Nor does it explain Obama voters who switched to Trump.

While you dressed up the language, you’re still just calling others “istaphobes” to avoid contending with real class issues — and making an ad hominem argument rather than contending with their legitimate disagreement.

Obama voters who switched to Trump are not a portion worth talking about. They are in the same vein as talking about no votes for genocide hardcore Palestinian supporters who sat out or people dating immigrants that had their partners deported. Interesting news stories that are nothing more than a distraction from the huge percentage of people that voted fully unconflicted and knew exactly what they wanted.

When you see those black and white photos of people hanging black people, or read stories about kids putting glass in the food and chairs of children going to an integrated school, so many of those people are still alive.

Trump was in his second year of college when the civil rights act passed and it was official policy black people were supposed to be treated like people. The civil rights act passing wasn't some official decree where the whole of the US respected that.

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