Morning Ed: Politics {2016.09.14.W}

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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332 Responses

  1. Saul Degraw says:

    1. There was some interesting word choice in the Buzzfeed piece about the Kremlin story.

    “The son of one of California’s top lawyers, he dropped out of high school and did not go to college. Instead, he says, he landed an internship at the age of 16 at the Claremont Institute working on a project on missile defense.”

    I clicked on the link and the guy is a very successful lawyer but I don’t know if I would call him “one of California’s top lawyers.” Ehrlich’s dad is a plaintiff’s lawyer. Interestingly plaintiff lawyer’s tend to be Democratic. Ehrlich the Younger is wearing a Trump cap in the Buzzfeed article along with a t-shirt that says “Seldom Right. Never in Doubt.” Theory: Son adopted his politics to attempt to piss of dad and is just trolling. Somehow Foreign Policy got caught with its pants down.

    This election has a side story of mainstream media/traditional media doing some really questionable things or being lazy and getting called on it by on-line outfits.

    2. Black voters: I think the Republican and Libertarian Parties are absolutely incapable of courting the Black Vote. Julian Bond of the NAACP said that the GOP could be competitive with black voters if the GOP supported affirmative action because there is a strong social conservatism in the Black community. IDK what Bond meant by this social conservatism but it does not seem to be the social conservatism of white Evangelicals and it is not the social conservatism that allegedly believes in limited government and pompously calls itself Burkean. Yet many GOP pundits just hit their heads on the wall, can’t seemingly get this, and keep on trying to sell goods that the Black community does not. If a parties ideology requires them to make a stand against civil rights laws under the pretense of “free association uber allies” they are racist in effect and possibly hiding their intent. Not getting this worthy of contempt.

    Plus there is the whole “basket” thing. I think HRC was more right than wrong about this and the real shock is because she said a truth that politicians are not supposed to say. I think the Buzzfeed panic article was a lot of hyperbole because no one in the GOP can ever give a Clinton an ounce of credit but it is also a sign that many GOP insiders were not racist but in very deep denial about the racism and bigotry of their base.

    I am sure NRO will still pat themselves on the head and say “Liberals are the real racists.”Report

    • LTL FTC in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      Re: Black Voters. Libertarians won’t get the black vote for the same reasons they won’t get the white vote. The system isn’t third party friendly and all third parties have a bias towards crankishness. Add to that the sclerotic nature of one-party dominance in gerrymandered districts and you get a situation where there’s very little room for political renegades.

      However, if you stick to the realm of the theoretical, a libertarian pitch to black voters would be interesting. Take the streak of libertarianism that advocates for the UBI. Get a good pitchman. Make the argument that the government enforced segregation, drew the original ’30s redlining maps (from whence the term came), funded the Tuskegee Experiments, knocked down neighborhoods in favor of terrible housing projects, etc. Why trust them now?

      Even affirmative action isn’t untouchable. There was a series on Slate (yeah, very Slate pitch-y, but interesting) that claimed AA basically skimmed the cream of already-relatively-advantaged blacks and nested them in white schools and companies where they get buried in middle-management and don’t build the real wealth that comes from entrepreneurship.

      An anti-government black politics could exist, but not framed as it currently is.Report

      • LeeEsq in reply to LTL FTC says:

        Anti-government Black politics already exist but it is leftist anti-government politics, the type that has a strong anti-market bias.Report

        • LTL FTC in reply to LeeEsq says:

          Anti-market to the extent they believe the market is a creature of the state, or that a state is a creature of those who succeed in the market.Report

          • LeeEsq in reply to LTL FTC says:

            Anti-market meaning that they don’t see it as an impersonal force but as consisting of exploitative business owners and corporations. Many of them also see it as a creation of the state and the state as being in a cozy relationship with the wealthy.Report

            • LTL FTC in reply to LeeEsq says:

              So it’s not so much anti-government as anti-this-government. More command and control with self-appointed leaders doing the commanding and controlling. That’s standard left stuff, as you said.

              But that group would never go libertarian anyway. My inkling is that, while among the loudest voices, they don’t represent more than a sliver of the population. If it’s between having agency and critical race theory, the latter is nearly always less popular.

              http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-surprising-optimism-of-african-americans-and-latinos/401054/

              It appears that black voters are more positive toward the American Dream for those who work for it than whites.Report

              • Morat20 in reply to LTL FTC says:

                Given the way the system has worked historically, any good ideas a third party comes up with generally get eaten by one of the main parties.

                At least in name. Following through is, of course, another issue entirely.

                But that’s why what’s left is generally pretty fringe — anything that wasn’t fringe go co-opted.Report

          • Oscar Gordon in reply to LTL FTC says:

            Anti-market in that the market doesn’t generally work for them. Still, libertarians have an in that Democratic politicians largely ignore.Report

            • LeeEsq in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

              I generally think that people care much less about licensing and other rent-seeking than libertarians assume.Report

            • Saul Degraw in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

              @oscar-gordon

              I think Lee is right on the fact that licensing seems to be a cri de ceour for libertarians in ways that it is not for the majority and it sort of goes to the “tendency of crankishness.”

              Plus the braiding thing is a low-hanging fruit. Something that libertarians always bring up but there are still plenty of regulations that deal with health and safety and career. Esthecians use lots of chemicals and hot substances on people. Surely it is not horrible to say that if you use chemicals and hot wax on people, you should be trained and licensed.

              I often here libertarians say that they are not opposed to regulations and licensing but I never here which ones they support.

              This is why liberals and libertarians shall never meet. The libertarian assumption seems to be that regulations are de facto wrong and need to jump a skyscraper sized hurdle before correct. I think licenses and regulations should convey a basic safety and competency. “I can use this product for its intended use and instructions and have minimal risk of serious injury” or “This license shows the person providing the service knows what they are doing, more or less.” The libertarian world seems rather “Caveat Emptor” to me.

              But that ignores that civil rights and access are still a big issue. Lots of minorities tend to like civil rights laws that say you can’t deny someone access or employment based their minority status. There are still large chunks of the libertarian party that consider this to be an absolute wrong because they believe in “freedom of association above all.” There is nothing wrong about having this belief but just expect that it will hurt your chances with segments of the population that disagree with you.Report

              • I often here libertarians say that they are not opposed to regulations and licensing but I never here which ones they support.

                I’m pretty sure almost all support regulating and licensing physicians.Report

              • Damon in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                ” I think licenses and regulations should convey a basic safety and competency.”

                This would be nice indeed, but do they really? Let’s take a common license lots of people are familiar with. The driver’s lisc. You have to pass written and driving tests. Often times, there is “real time training” and a rule book to memorize. In my state, you are actually tested in a parking lot and drive between cones. No actual road/highway driving is tested or evaluated. And just how much time behind the wheel is needed?

                6 hours.

                So, after driving for 6 hours, taking 30 hours of class time, passing the written and driving test, you are 100% qualified, PER THE STATE, to drive a 2 ton vehicle at 65 MPH on the highway at 16 years of age.

                Do you think that what’s required in my state give the new driver a familiarity with “basic safety and competency”? Going to bet your life? Well, you are. Perhaps that’s one reason why the insurance rates for under 25 year olds is so high?

                Long story short…maybe we should actually look at the regulations and licenses to see if they actually do what they are ostensibly supposed to do, hmm?Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                I often here libertarians say that they are not opposed to regulations and licensing but I never here which ones they support.

                Seriously?! @saul-degraw , my good man, I am starting to think you have a significant mental block that acts like @will-truman ‘s Snake People Firefox plug-in, in that anything a libertarian says to you, regardless of it’s actual content, just gets replaced with whatever highly offensive bit of opinion some libertarian somewhere said recently.

                But, I have a four year old, so I’m getting good at repeating myself, so here goes…

                Libertarians, in general, DO NOT oppose regulation. What they oppose are laws & regulations which are:

                A) Ideologically motivated with little to no evidentiary basis to support the policy (re: laws that criminalize teenage sexual behavior).
                B) Clearly rent seeking*
                C) Clearly captured*

                *Especially when sold as ‘in the interest of public safety’.

                Of course, there is a measure of Chesterton’s Gate involved in all this, but when it can be shown that a given law or regulation does a better job protecting entrenched interests or paying rents than it does in protecting the public from some harm, then libertarians are right to point it out and question whether or not it needs to be re-written, and liberals & conservatives shouldn’t be so eager to dismiss the concern.

                Now, in relation to the topic at hand, if a given set of regulations (e.g. barber regs) were written with very traditional barber or styling salon practices in mind, then what you might have is a set of regs ill-suited to address the needs of something new[1]. There is no shame in looking at the existing regs & saying, “Oh, well, these are certainly overkill for this new thing, or completely inappropriate to the concerns of the new thing, and we should craft something new”. When that doesn’t happen, when the concerns are casually dismissed, then I start looking for capture, especially if that something new is potentially disruptive. When that something new is pretty specific to an ethnic minority, and no one seems inclined to examine the efficacy, then I have to wonder if it’s disruptive, or if perhaps TPTB just aren’t really interested in that ethnic minority being able to hang their shingle and try to find their own success.

                Let’s take this back to your objection to the word ‘entrepreneur’. An entrepreneur is hardly ever fabulously wealthy. The vast, vast majority are generally middle class and work harder than most people ever do. If you don’t like the word entrepreneur, fine, let’s call it something simplier. Small. Business. Owner.

                If I look at regs and see that they present a very high barrier to members of an ethnic minority becoming small business owners, and no one in the dominant political parties seems to care, perhaps I have an in, where I can say to that ethnic minority, “Look, the big players don’t care about your concern, because preserving the status quo is more important to them, or protecting entrenched interests are, or perhaps they just don’t like your kind. They don’t care that the market isn’t be allowed to work for you, and are only interested in offering you their preferred options for getting ahead. I’ll help you find your own path to success.”

                It may not resonate with everyone, but it’ll resonate with more than a few.

                [1] You might also have regs that are crafted to protect entrenched interests, if the regs present a significant barrier to entry, but let’s set that aside for the moment.Report

            • Jesse Ewiak in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

              What @leeesq said. People complain about having to get a license, but it’s a fifth or sixth level problem for most people not paid by think tanks. And frankly, it doesn’t pass the smell test to most people, especially minorities, when libertarians try to sell people on the idea that if only we got rid of the vast majority of regulation, we’d fix poverty in the inner cities.

              Now I’m not saying you’re saying this, but entirely too many libertarian types ignore other massive structural problems because it gets in the way of certain ideological priors.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Jesse Ewiak says:

                @jesse-ewiak

                Conceded to a point. Depending on the regs at hand, they might be tangential to the structural issues, or part & parcel to them.

                I don’t recall if it was here, or somewhere else, but I remember a discussion about how the application of a regulation can be much more problematic than the language of it, so examining regulation as part of the whole structural package is indicated.Report

      • Saul Degraw in reply to LTL FTC says:

        @ltl-ftc

        1. I am still one of those people who thinks that UBI is a pipe dream. I don’t think it can ever be enough to completely replace the welfare state (but you could get rid of UI and maybe Social Security). Plus I still think there is a strong attitude towards the importance of work and not in a “do what you love” Star Trek kind of way. UBI is nice but so far the average UBI supporter seems to be a liberal or libertarian with a graduate degree and too much time thinking about politics.

        2. The issue with “entrepreneurship” as a system is that it allows a handful of people to become astronomically wealthy while everyone else just lags behind. The average black family has a net work of around 6600 dollars. The average white family has a net worth of 127,000 dollars. This is because of home ownership equity. I think we need to talk about having more middle class black families than having a few really wealthy black entruprenuers.Report

        • LTL FTC in reply to Saul Degraw says:

          The counterargument is that black entrepreneurs don’t have the same biases against black people, black consumer needs and black neighborhoods. It also answers some of the “I need to see someone like me to prove it’s possible for me” representational issues.

          Whether that’s trickle-down nonsense is up to you; that’s the argument.Report

          • Saul Degraw in reply to LTL FTC says:

            I believe in the first statement but I find the word entrepreneur to be overblown and overused. Not everyone is going to be a Mark Zuckerberg.

            I have a general bias against business speak in general like the word “pivot.” As far as I can tell “pivot” means “our original business plan was not making money or making enough money or did not have good growth potential so we needed to change things up.” I get that the definition is cumbersome to say but the word “pivot” just sounds like a cutesy avoidance to me. Yet you seem to need to be able to use the word with a straight face.Report

    • Absent some pretty major change, the ceiling of black support for the GOP is likely to remain low. With some effort, though, and over time, I could see 5% becoming 20%. Still a lopsided minority, but a healthier one, and very electorally significant. This has been done at state levels. I don’t see them dedicating the resources (or having the patience) to get up to 20%, but every bit matters (including Romney bringing it down to 6%, and Trump to possibly even lower.)

      That doesn’t really address the 538 issue, though, because African-Americans would still be taken for granted by the Democrats at 80%, most likely. But maybe less so than now.Report

      • Morat20 in reply to Will Truman says:

        There are racists in America, and not exactly a small number of them.

        They’re gonna concentrate in one party (whichever one they feel is more friendly towards them), and as long as that party is even a bit responsive to their lobbying — blacks are going to steer clear. They remember Jim Crow just as well as anyone else.

        Nominating Trump and letting the White Supremacist flag fly probably means that blacks are gonna be suspicious of the GOP for a lot longer — and can you blame them? And worse yet, for that to change — the GOP would have to commit to years and years of appeals with no real return. (In short, they’ve got to change and show they’ve changed before they’re going to get much of a fair look. History weighs heavily on decision making).

        Stupid appeals like “Democrats were the party of slavery!” and “Lincoln was a Republican” (both serious, actual pitches I’ve heard from people who should know better) don’t help, because those appear to be based on the notion that black voters are idiots. I’ve never found “Hey, I think you’re the dumbest person on the planet, so you should vote for me!” to be a particularly compelling pitch.Report

        • Will Truman in reply to Morat20 says:

          Racists can and have been split between parties.

          Even if it may not pay dividends for a month, the GOP should reach out now so that when memories fade the pieces are in place and the memories are there. You start it now for 2024 or 2028, not for 2020. Though even by 2020, you could see some movement depending on what happens in the interim.

          The biggest obstacle isn’t really the memory of Trump, though. It’s the cooperation of Steve King (and others). That’s the really hard part.Report

          • Saul Degraw in reply to Will Truman says:

            @will-truman

            I don’t deny that there is racism among people who are loyal Democratic voters but it seems like these voters can put aside their racism enough and still vote Democratic.Report

          • Morat20 in reply to Will Truman says:

            Racists can and have been split between parties.

            Yes, but as I noted: and as long as that party is even a bit responsive to their lobbying — is the critical bit.

            Racists are gonna vote, right? But there’s a difference between me and a racist voting for Bob because, in addition to being racist, he’s also a fan of Bob’s voting record on education and me and a racist voting for Bob because Bob spends a lot of time re-tweeting Klan members.

            That’s the problem the GOP has. It’s not that it’s the party with lots of visible racists, the problem is it’s the party that’s been visibly courting them since 1964. It’s the party where racists are a key voting block, even if it’s rude to say in public.

            And so minorities are going to view a GOP pivot on race with extreme skepticism.

            Because they’re not morons, and they know dang well what the GOP has been doing. And the GOP’s ham-fisted responses, which include the worst of tokenism coupled with the stupidest of appeals “Lincoln was a Republican!”, is not only crude and unpersuasive, it’s insulting.

            I find the latest variant of “We’re racist because the Democrats called us names” to be a pretty good sign that they’re not gonna be changing their spots anytime soon. Token gestures up against decades of courting the white supremacists and screwing over minorities isn’t really gonna work too well.Report

            • Will Truman in reply to Morat20 says:

              Oh, I agree that they are not likely to do what they need to do. I just disagreed that it is a pointless exercise (unless they’re willing to do something like flip a majority of issues).

              I think there are a lot of things they can do on the margins (or in many cases, things they can stop doing), that will have marginal but non-zero effect. For the most part, though, it doesn’t seem to be a priority even within their limited outreach efforts.Report

              • Morat20 in reply to Will Truman says:

                Because they’re not doing those things out of spite or stupidity. They’re doing those things because it gets the racists to the polls.

                They can’t make more than the most obvious token gestures without ticking off the racists, and the GOP is stuck because they have a lot more racist voters than black voters (Witness the alt-right and the nomination of Trump), and they can’t really sell “Let’s, at best, demotivate the racists to not get a lot of minority votes for several cycles” because they’ll just lose elections.

                It’s a local maxima problems. They’re stuck on a hill. Sometimes that hill is high enough to win, sometimes not. A ways away is a higher hill, but between the hills is a valley. To get to a higher hill requires going down, losing more elections — and the problem with losing elections is their voters (and the people who didn’t lose) say “We need to go back to what works!”.

                They’re stuck.

                Most of them realize that. They’d LOVE to have more minority votes, and the movers and shakers and party leadership all know why they’re not getting them. But math is math — and they’ve got more racists to lose than minority votes to win, and their base will not tolerate multiple losing cycles to improve their position. (You’ve seen what happens when they lose. The mid-term elections have a ton of extremist primaries, and they improve their position due to low overall turnout. So the conclusion of “more extreme = winning” is hard to deny).Report

              • Will Truman in reply to Morat20 says:

                When it comes to the things they’re doing that they shouldn’t:

                Sort of. For any given congresscritter or senator, there is a lot of upside and little downside when it comes to making outrageous comments. They’re in safe districts, and it gets people talking about them. It’s not good for the collective whole, though. But there’s a collective action problem.

                The things they’re not doing that they should:

                There’s nothing stopping many of them. It’s just not been a priority, and they’re getting a lot of bad advice from all quarters. This is not a party that knows what it’s doing and gets it wrong. It’s a party that doesn’t really know what it’s doing, which ends up ceding a lot of control to the strategic operators mentioned above. Or, at the least, it’s a collective action problem for the rest. They don’t act together until they literally have no choice but to, which also does the “ceding power” thing.Report

    • InMD in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      I don’t really see how FP got caught doing anything other than sharing a perspective that’s both common in other parts of the world and said something other than echo the Western perspective. Now I think there’s an argument to be made that Trump’s temperament increases the possibility of an international incident escalating into military conflict but all we have is conjecture. On the other hand we know for a fact that Clinton believes in an extremely belligerent and militaristic foreign policy, where the US not only plays world policeman but intervenes in all manner of disputes even if only tenuously connected to American interests. Now maybe we get lucky, and she at least continues the Obama trend of not putting boots on the ground anywhere and a Republican Congress frustrates her ability to use force as freely as she’d like, albeit for completely unprincipled reasons. However there are a lot of places in the world that look at Clinton as a big threat to stability and to their interests. Now obviously those players have their own self interest in mind as opposed to some higher principle but it is a view that needs to be taken seriously.

      Take the references to ultra-right wing nationalist involvement in the overthrow of the government of Ukraine. There’s another perspective out there that says the US and EU backed the overthrow of a democratically elected government by factions that included violent political extremists. This isn’t to say that the government that was overthrown was a good one but that situation was a lot more complicated than good, liberals peacefully orchestrating the ouster of an illegitimate regime. The former is the type of foreign policy Clinton supports whereas Trump is more of an unknown quantity. Now this is not to say there aren’t reasons to support Clinton over Trump but the office of the presidency is most powerful in the realm of foreign policy and we should absolutely take concerns about her preference for meddling, destabilizing other countries, and exacerbating conflicts into account when assessing her fitness for office.Report

      • Will Truman in reply to InMD says:

        This is sort of my thought, too.

        Matt Stinson (former contributor to The American Scene, anti-Trump right-leaner living in China presently) has expressed on more than one occasion that the Chinese perspective is that Hillary Clinton is more hawkish and a greater threat of war. That’s *despite* that (a) there are no allegations of undue Chinese influence as there are with the Russians, and (b) Trump wants to blow up the Chinese economy. But the view over there is different than it is over here. And it seems to me that’s something worth knowing?Report

        • InMD in reply to Will Truman says:

          I agree. One of the biggest blind spots in our political debates around foreign policy is what our interventions look like elsewhere, and the types of precedents it can be perceived as setting in regards to ongoing disputes and conflicts that most Americans have never heard of.Report

  2. LeeEsq says:

    New York Attorney General is going to investigate Trump’s charity.

    Adding to what @saul-degraw said about the Republican and Libertarian parties courting the African-American vote, the recent conversation on the Coates thread also demonstrates why the Republican and Libertarian parties are going to have a problem going after African-American voters. They are not going to vote for a party where a significant amount of the members see themselves as “race realists” and believe that African-Americans are less intelligent and more crime prone than White Americans. Even when Republicans try to go after African-Americans, they do so in the most insulting way possible like insulting the mass African-American elected officials in city governments. The Greens are just a joke and won’t do anything necessary to be a serious political party. In the United Kingdom the Greens would have degenerated into a Trotskyite sex cult like the SWP by now. This leaves the Democratic Party as the only one with anything to offerReport

    • Kolohe in reply to LeeEsq says:

      The current New York Attorney General has been in office for 5 years. The Trump Foundation has been around for just shy of 30 years, and has been significantly shady for at least 10.

      But it’s just *now* that the NY AG starts an investigation? Two months before an election where the ostensible foundation bigwig is a candidate?

      This is how you get people to lose faith in rule of law.Report

      • notme in reply to Kolohe says:

        Of course the Dems will use the NY AG because using the FBI might look suspicious. Never mind the fact that he is a Hillary stooge.Report

        • Mo in reply to notme says:

          Is the Republican Congress hammering Benghazi, the Foundation and the emails inappropriate? Because the #3 Republican in the House at the time admitted it was to hit her poll numbers and hurt her in the election.Report

      • LeeEsq in reply to Kolohe says:

        Don’t like constitutional hardball when it’s applied to your side, eh?Report

        • Kolohe in reply to LeeEsq says:

          Hey, I’m rapidly arriving at Team Burn It All Down. Cheap poltical media stunts like this from Schniederman help my cause.

          (I’ll also note the previous two New York AG’s have been great benefactors to Team Burn It All Down)Report

      • Burt Likko in reply to Kolohe says:

        I agree it’s cynical. I disagree that it’s novel. Attorneys General at both the state and national levels have served as political lightning rods since at least the Nixon Administration.Report

        • In related news, we wouldn’t have wasted all those brain cells talking about Benghazi! had Clinton gone into secluded retirement in Chappaqua.

          Of course the difference is that the Benghazi! investigation was obvious bullshit from the start, while the Trump Foundation seems, based on the information currently available, to be a real scam.Report

          • Kolohe in reply to Richard Hershberger says:

            And the bullshit of the Benghazi investigation meant that everyone ignored that the war that Obama conducted in Libya, with Hillary Clinton’s urging, was probably illegal and unconstitutional, and definitely a violation of the principles that Obama stated as a US Senator.

            But nobody gives a shit about principles or legality, as long as their team is calling the shots.

            The one beneficial aspect of a Trump presidency would be people taking principled stands against power again, resisting indirectly or directly government action.

            The complete opposite of the current state of things, where lese majeste of Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton are serious sins in the eyes of the typical internet liberal. (As we see this very day in Colin Powell’s reputation taking a hit again, because he said mean things about Clinton)Report

            • greginak in reply to Kolohe says:

              Really?! I mean really??? You believe this?

              “The one beneficial aspect of a Trump presidency would be people taking principled stands against power again, resisting indirectly or directly government action.”Report

              • Kolohe in reply to greginak says:

                Well, certain people who aren’t now. Like, the Answer people are still protesting wars in front of the White House, but all the mood affiliated people that were with them in the heyday of the Bush administration disappeared from the conversation on January 20, 2009 at around 12 noon. Some even came back to party at the White House when Obama announced Bin Laden was dead…sprry. “brought to justice”

                The mood affiliation though is going to come roaring back in the still unlikely event Trump wins. Heck, Yglesias might start linking to the Enough people again.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kolohe says:

                “Man. Trump gets elected and we start having ‘grim milestones’ in Afghanistan again. Say what you will about Obama, but we didn’t pass any when he was president.”Report

              • greginak in reply to Jaybird says:

                Shame we didn’t’ elect McCain or Romney, they were certainly peaceniks. Heck they might have even got us a treaty to de nukeify Iran.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to greginak says:

                Sneering sarcasm to shut down a criticism works better when you understand the criticism being levied.Report

              • Don Zeko in reply to Jaybird says:

                Seems no less asinine than pretending that mood criticism, rather than the dramatic reduction in US combat fatalities as we drew down our troops, took the fervor out of anti-war activism.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Don Zeko says:

                I’m pretty sure that the switching from ground troops to drones did wonders when it came to sucking the air out of the room when it came to anti-war activism. A point well-made.Report

              • Don Zeko in reply to Jaybird says:

                Being at war isn’t like being pregnant; one war might be more intense and costly than another, and that matters. I’d rather Obama had de-escalated more than he did, but drawing down ground troops while escalating the drone campaign in Afghanistan and Pakistan is a net de-escalation. There’s more to the world than group solidarity. Part of the reduction in anti-war sentiment was because it became Obama’s wars in the Middle East, but part of it was because far fewer Americans were getting killed in the Middle East. In other words, because the anti-war movement got a big part of what they wanted.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Don Zeko says:

                I see the same things that you’re describing here.

                I was quite troubled by the AUMF being expanded rather than limited, though. I found myself wishing that a lot more members of the anti-war movement were more troubled by it.

                We did pass a lot fewer grim milestones, though. That helped.Report

              • DensityDuck in reply to Don Zeko says:

                “Part of the reduction in anti-war sentiment was because it became Obama’s wars in the Middle East, but part of it was because far fewer Americans were getting killed in the Middle East. In other words, because the anti-war movement got a big part of what they wanted.”

                …interesting how it’s Americans getting killed in the Middle East that was the problem, and yet somehow Gary Johnson is an asshole because he didn’t know what “Aleppo” was.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to DensityDuck says:

                My theory: nobody cared that Johnson didn’t know what Aleppo was. They just were feeling more and more and more obligated to vote for a third party (as opposed to one of the two real ones) and when Johnson said that, it gave them an out.Report

              • DensityDuck in reply to Jaybird says:

                Indeed, there was strong evidence that even the people chortling about how Johnson didn’t know what Aleppo was didn’t actually know themselves.Report

              • greginak in reply to Jaybird says:

                Your complaining about sarcasm???
                “Sneering” is that the new word of the month i guess.
                I understand the criticism, it isn’t new. But i deeply apologize for shutting you down…lord knows you can no longer type or express yourself due to my dominating sneer and razor sharp sarcasm.
                But at least the Iran treaty was good …right? Peaceful resolution and arms reduction and all that good stuff….right?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to greginak says:

                And with that, I conclude that you didn’t understand that criticism either.Report

              • greginak in reply to Jaybird says:

                Well at least i didn’t shut you down. So good for me.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

                This is really getting ridiculous. What the hell are we even doing here?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

                I agreed with Kolohe, Greg made fun of what I was agreeing with by condescending about something else entirely, I told him that that works better when you’re condescending about the point actually being made, then he accused me of complaining that I was being shut down and I pointed out that he still didn’t understand what I was agreeing with in the first place.

                Why do you ask?Report

              • greginak in reply to Jaybird says:

                Condescending. Shut down. Sneering. Interesting choice of words.

                But at least the Iran deal was good a thing right?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to greginak says:

                Sneering condescension to shut down a criticism works better when you understand the criticism being made.

                But we covered this already.Report

              • But were you punching up or punching down? And were violating a safe space?Report

              • Mike Schilling in reply to Jaybird says:

                Just like a liberal, sneering and condescending. At least the alt-right honestly tells you to leave the country.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Mike Schilling says:

                I’m not sure “but-what-about”ism is going to work well this election cycle.Report

              • greginak in reply to Jaybird says:

                So a few snarky comments here was a major part of This Election Cycle. Are you coming out as a Trumpet who is being sneered at and shut down but an admitted liberal type?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to greginak says:

                You still seem to think that I’m complaining about the snark.

                I’m not.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

                It wasn’t long ago you wrote several comments mocking a position that certain folks who aren’t here might take.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

                Do you see the difference between that and what happened here?Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

                I don’t but am totally open to hearing it.

                My apologies to both @jaybird and @burt-likko for being a bit more cantankerous than usual. I appreciate the many contributions that Jaybird makes here but find myself increasingly frustrated with the inefficiency with which I can access them. I’d rather not fully disengage because it’d be a net loss to me… just wish it was easier.Report

              • Burt Likko in reply to Kazzy says:

                This is really getting ridiculous. What the hell are we even doing here?

                That’s a good question. I can’t leave you guys alone for ninety minutes before something like this happens?

                Deep breaths, people. Please. Is a request to “move on to some other thing” is in order?Report

              • Damon in reply to Burt Likko says:

                This nesting comment thing is making it really hard to keep up on the drama…..especially since I came into the middle of it.

                *stirs pot*Report

              • notme in reply to greginak says:

                Obama’s cave in deal didn’t de nukeify Iran.Report

              • greginak in reply to notme says:

                It accomplished all the arms reduction goals everybody wanted. Well “everybody wanted” until there was a deal, then some people didn’t want it because a pony wasn’t included.Report

              • Mike Schilling in reply to Kolohe says:

                And the nuclear freeze people will be really motivated too.Report

            • J_A in reply to Kolohe says:

              Did he?

              Only thing I remember Colin Powell saying recently about Clinton is that he recommended Hillary to set up a Yahoo email, and that he decided to ignore IT security protocols by using a BB in secure areas.

              That, and that he emailed some friends about Trump, and not in a Trump positive way.Report

      • Mo in reply to Kolohe says:

        In Schneiderman’s defense, has anything similar to the FEC complaint hit the Trump Foundation prior to this?Report

      • Mike Schilling in reply to Kolohe says:

        “Sure he’s a crook, and I know, you’re using completely legal means to investigate him, and yeah, convicting him will be a boon to all the people who’ll be filing civil suits to get their money back, but still, it looks bad. Maybe, for fairness, you could do another one of those expensive, time-consuming Clinton investigations that lead nowhere. At least it’ll give The Times something to write about.”Report

  3. Saul Degraw says:

    Pacific Standard argues that the Media is tougher on HRC because the Media bias is to be tougher on candidates that they expect to win:

    https://psmag.com/the-real-bias-in-the-media-coverage-of-presidential-campaigns-e69ff2391b6f#.nm6a1is5t

    Of course it seems like this is an election where this can be a very bad decision considering the epic awfulness of Trumpykins.Report

  4. Saul Degraw says:

    GQ ran a bunch of interviews with undecided voters:

    http://www.gq.com/story/inside-the-mind-of-the-undecided-voter

    “This one struck out to bspencer at LGM and to me:

    And then I also obviously struggle with Donald Trump. The things I like about him are: I believe that sometimes you just have to blow shit up to build it again, and I think that a Trump presidency would do that. But just when I sort of get there with him, like, Ohhhhhhkayyyy, he says or does something and I’m like, “No, I can’t!” Like saying, “What do you have to lose?” to African-Americans. Like, WHAT? What?

    I think I would just have to sort of give in to my chaos theory of Trump and just hope that he surrounds himself with the right people enough that it’s not a total disaster? Or Hillary would have to do a really convincing and honest come-to-Jesus with the media. A real press conference.”

    From a 42 year old DC reporter who was unfortunately allowed to go unnamed and get away with saying he knows “too much” about HRC to vote for her without challenge.

    What kind of person manages to make it to 42 and still think blowing things up for the sake of blowing things up is an appropriate political theory? How big is this demographic?Report

    • Burt Likko in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      I’ve neighbors half again that age who think pretty much exactly that. I don’t know that it’s particularly well-thought-out world view, but there is a lot of that out there: sometimes things get FUBAR and it’s easier, cheaper, faster, and more effective to start over from scratch than to fix what’s presently in place. There are plenty of circumstances when this is a reasonable enough attitude for activities like manufacturing, cooking, engineering, and woodworking. If those sorts of things are your primary kinds of experiences, perhaps it’s not so surprising that you’d think that also applies (at least sometimes) in government and law too.

      What’s surprising to me is that a reporter holds this attitude.Report

      • J_A in reply to Burt Likko says:

        I take exception to engineering being in your list above. As an engineer, I’ve never thought blowing up stuff to see what happens is a good way to solve a problemReport

        • Burt Likko in reply to J_A says:

          Point taken. But I bet you have had situations in which starting over from scratch appeared to be a better idea than modifying what was already in place.Report

          • Such are common in the software world. Colorado’s core unemployment insurance software runs on an antique IBM mainframe. Then there’s a layer built on mini-computers that took advantage of their better network and new media support. PCs got tacked on in odd ways to handle things like scanning claims submitted on paper. Today there’s yet another layer provided by a standard data center server farm arrangement that puts a web-based front-end on the whole mess.

            There are a handful of companies that sell approved UI software systems (UI is a joint federal/state program, and the feds set lots of rules for “conforming” programs). None of them are suitable, as Colorado has a couple of archaic twists in how costs are calculated and assigned to employers. The cost of a one-off modified version of a standard package is… more than the state is willing to pay. When the whole tottering pile of current software falls over, I expect that Colorado will modify its policies so that it can buy a standard system.

            I find it fascinating that we have reached the point where policy choices are sometimes made based on the cost to acquire the software to implement them.Report

            • J_A in reply to Michael Cain says:

              “I find it fascinating that we have reached the point where policy choices are sometimes made based on the cost to build the software to implement them.”

              The XVIII century concept of “we do things our way here and they do it differently in the next county” worked fine and made sense when 90% of the people would never visit the next county in their lives. But it’s really hurting us now.

              There is no good reason for CO and UT to calculate benefits differently. If CO’s system is better, it’s hurting the UT people, and vice versa. It both are equivalent, then having two or fifty systems in one country, with thousands of people moving around everyday, and corporations operating everywhere, makes no sense.

              Some day we will standardize. I hope it’s soonReport

              • Michael Cain in reply to J_A says:

                I wouldn’t hold my breath. UI wouldn’t have passed back in the 1930s without giving the individual states considerable control over the level of benefits, and probably wouldn’t pass today without that.

                To be honest, following the Supreme Court’s National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius decision on Medicaid expansion, I’m surprised that some states haven’t challenged the constitutionality of the federal UI statute. If the threshold is — and IANAL, so the lawyers should feel free to criticize — that if the punishment for not participating is so big that no state can reasonably be expected to not implement the program, then the UI legislation fails. For UI, the stick is the much higher federal UI tax employers would have to pay in states that do not implement a conforming program. That every state will obviously implement a program is evident since, TTBOMK, even though the statute requires the federal Dept. of Labor to operate a UI program if the state chooses not to, the DOL has made zero provisions for actually doing so. From time to time some state legislator suggests scrapping their state’s UI program. That’s usually followed in the next day or two with a statement to the effect of “I’ve heard from employers in my district, and the UI thing is much more nuanced than I thought.” The nuance is that the employers’ UI costs would, in a typical state, double.Report

          • Troublesome Frog in reply to Burt Likko says:

            The trick for that is usually that you come up with a plan to replace the thing you’re blowing up before you blow it up. If you have a bridge, for example, you might design a new bridge so people aren’t wondering where their bridge went.

            In politics, “Vote for me! I’ll burn this place to the ground!” is a complete and legitimate plan that get a lot of serious support and consideration.Report

        • Joe Sal in reply to J_A says:

          If solving the problem involves blowing up stuff that never should have been built, I’m fully on board with the new era of Pyro-Modernism.Report

        • Kolohe in reply to J_A says:

          As someone who studied but never practiced engineering professionally, I nonetheless see the use for both DT and NDT.

          Also, the engineers on Omaha beach certainly thought blowing stuff up was the best way to solve several important problems.Report

          • J_A in reply to Kolohe says:

            The key word in Destructive TESTING is TESTING. It’s not DESTRUCTIVE

            Yes, we blow up stuff in mines too. After we plan for what and where we are going to blow up things, and we are fairly certain that we know what the place will look like afterwards, and that no one is hurt, and nothing of value is lost.

            I restate the suggestion of someone above. We need to start the destroying somewhere. Is it ok if we start with your house and your finances? Hopefully, at the end, you’ll be better of. Of course, we have no clue if that is going to be the outcome, but you are cool with destructive testing, aren’t you?Report

            • Oscar Gordon in reply to J_A says:

              Personally, I’m very much a “Tear it down” kind of guy, but carefully, brick by brick, and be sure to shoot the looters when they come for the pieces, because you are probably going to need to reuse a lot of that stuff.Report

            • Kolohe in reply to J_A says:

              Is this like one of those things where if you think tax rates need to rise, you should just go ahead a cut a check to the government on your own anyway?Report

              • J_A in reply to Kolohe says:

                Is this you walking back from the idea of destroying stuff? Or just walking back from the idea of your stuff getting destroyed?Report

              • Kolohe in reply to J_A says:

                It’s me concluding the initial misidentification of my “side” to defend partisan hackery means it all going to burn down sooner instead of later, whether I like it or not. And I’m in the Capitol; when the system breaks apart, I’ll be watching the Games, until the revolution finally happens, and at that point I’ll truly be too old to care.Report

              • Joe Sal in reply to J_A says:

                J_A let me make a modest proposal.

                You put all social constructs in a pile, I’ll put all my social constructs in that pile, set it on fire and see who starts pulling stuff out of the blaze first.Report

              • J_A in reply to Joe Sal says:

                See, you missed the part where I said, as an engineer, I’m in principle against burning, crashing and blowing up stuff.

                My social constructs (whatever they are, I don’t think in those terms) are not set in stone, nor predate my preferred actions. I’m happy to change my preferred actions for something that can be empirically (or at least theoretically) be shown to work better (here comes the important part) in these specific temporal and geographical circumstances and for the specific people involved in the change.

                How much are you willing to change your social constructs for something that works better in practice? Or are your social constructs something that can’t fail, they can only be failed?Report

              • Joe Sal in reply to J_A says:

                What if I were to tell you some people don’t want social constructs?

                Empirically, social constructs are responsible for every war ever fought.

                Empirically, social constructs are responsible for every form of genocide that has occurred.

                Empirically, social constructs have resulted in millions of people being oppressed.

                Empirically, social constructs fail in cascade, killing many of the people they are supposed to be serving.

                How would this color your view of temporal and geographic circumstances involved?

                The really strange thing is people are running and investing their authority in these things for protection and security, knowing full well what can and will happen.

                In the development of society are social constructs the thing we SHOULD be organizing society around?

                There is a list of social constructs here:

                https://ordinary-times.com/2016/07/27/the-compass-and-the-constructs/Report

              • pillsy in reply to Joe Sal says:

                What if I were to tell you some people don’t want social constructs?

                Those people should get used to disappointment.Report

              • Joe Sal in reply to pillsy says:

                History has shown that those who build social constructs are the ones disappointed when the fire levels their clutched pearls.Report

              • pillsy in reply to Joe Sal says:

                Are pearls–clutched or otherwise–even flammable?

                As for disappointment, it is as much a part of the human condition as social constructs are.Report

              • Joe Sal in reply to pillsy says:

                The human condition is pretty relative to the social constructs surrounding it.

                In a round about way the human condition some what determines the autoignition temperature of the social construct.Report

              • pillsy in reply to Joe Sal says:

                The human condition is pretty relative to the social constructs surrounding it.

                It is!

                I just don’t think any substantial number of people have ever lived without any social constructs at all, and of those tiny minority that have, very few seem to have done so by choice. I’m hesitant to say that any particular sort of social construct is essential–but I don’t think you’ll ever get away from all of them unless you go all Robinson Crusoe.Report

              • Joe Sal in reply to pillsy says:

                We lived for a very long time with social constructs in the single digits, and without a surmountable of authority invested.

                There aren’t many people who would be comfortable with the thought of living without any. I am one of the few that isn’t frightened by the idea. There is a sizable population looking to live with as few as possible.

                That’s kind of where some of the friction comes from. Ignition isn’t necessarily determined by the creators or maintainers of the social construct but by the people who wish to burn it down.Report

              • pillsy in reply to Joe Sal says:

                We lived for a very long time with social constructs in the single digits, and without a surmountable of authority invested.

                Fewer? Probably!

                But having more social constructs seems like it’s not obviously going to increase the power of social constructs in one\’s life. On the one hand, it’s more to keep track of, but on the other hand, you have some flexibility about which social constructs you care the most about, and being able to choose is a sort of freedom.

                (I just realized that I just made that really obnoxious, “Why don’t you just move to Somalia!?!” argument, but I’m not being sarcastic at all. Weird.)Report

              • Joe Sal in reply to pillsy says:

                The tricky part is keeping the authority invested below certain levels.Report

              • Morat20 in reply to Joe Sal says:

                We lived for a very long time with social constructs in the single digits, and without a surmountable of authority invested.

                We also lived for a very long time in caves, and died of dysentery a lot.

                What’s your point?Report

              • Michael Cain in reply to Joe Sal says:

                The counter is, obviously, to ask you to cite a situation in which humans have survived for a significant amount of time without social constructs of some sort. I don’t think anyone here will disagree with the notion that there are good constructs and bad ones. Or that the bad ones can have really unpleasant consequences. But no social constructs? For better or worse, we are social African plains apes.Report

              • Joe Sal in reply to Michael Cain says:

                Now that’s a comment with traction. How about this, lets say that a complete list of social constructs can be created. We eliminate the most proven dangerous ones, or ‘change’ them to exist with the least amount of authority?

                If people continue to run over other people with them, we start burning them down every twenty years and start over.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Joe Sal says:

                We eliminate the most proven dangerous ones, or ‘change’ them to exist with the least amount of authority?

                Isn’t that what social justice is?Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Joe Sal says:

                I asked about social justice only because I’m honestly not sure what you are going on about.
                Are you proposing some sort of theory for how to achieve justice, social or otherwise?
                Is it a utilitarian improvement?

                You keep asserting that “we” should do this, and “we should do that.
                Assuming i am part of that “we”, I have to ask, why should I want to?

                The deeper question here is that you want to somehow accomplish a major re-jiggering of society but yet you are having a hard time coming to grips with the ideas and mores and priors that other people bring to the conversation.

                Are we all invited to weigh in on, and contribute our own notions to this?Report

              • Pillsy in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Isn’t “we” a social construct? Hell, if I were feeling like making incautious but snappy comments, I might even say that “we” is the social construct from which all others flow.Report

              • Joe Sal in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                I apologize I gave the short answer last night. My slightly longer one would maybe have been about social construct control, but that would take a lot of unpacking to have been legible.

                Social justice is also a social construct. I know it’s a important issue on your side of the fence. The bigger problem with it is it is directly embedded in social objectivity. That’s not to big a problem except most folks of a particular faction over there tend to lay claim they have the One True Objectivity (liberal) position, which kind of leaves them at the table thinking they hold all the cards. At that point it’s kind of standard proceedure to get up and let those folks play solitair.

                Half the nation doesn’t internalize or make a individual construct of social justice turning it into subjective justice. I think it has a lot to do with that claim of One True Objectivity(liberal). For various reasons it doesn’t look accurate to a lot of folks, and secondly it appears people want to chain people to all sorts of nefarious social political constructs because of it.

                If that’s not bad enough, One True Objectivity (liberal)goal post gets moved around after people get changed to it by the demagogues of the order.

                Now this is only in contrast to the One True Objectivity (conservative) claim, which I’m pretty sure no one on your side of the fence wants to be chained to.

                Not just no, but hell no.

                What you got?Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Joe Sal says:

                So…
                Why should I subscribe to your newsletter?

                Yeah, I’m being snarky, but you keep making these dark accusatory comments at All OF US for some sort of moral or ethical failing, and sounding like you want to alter things for the better, yet I’m still waiting for a picture to emerge that makes me care.

                I mean conservatives and liberals at least claim that we would all be happier and more fulfilled if we only did X;

                I keep hearing some abstract Y of yours, but not sure why I should prefer it to the status quo.

                If we somehow followed your prescription, would there be more justice, human flourishing, happiness, better tasting coffee, or what?Report

              • Joe Sal in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                We can’t have this conversation because as soon as we get to why Y is better than X for reasons of A,B, and C. You know who jumps in about how those Y people are so utopianistic, can’t believe people think that way, etc.
                It just gets old.Report

              • Stillwater in reply to Joe Sal says:

                Joe,

                It shouldn’t get old since that’s the crux of the issue, really. I mean, I can ask a perfectly understandable question in the English language (is radical individualism a coherent, consistent, viable political-economicphilosophy?) and get lots of different answers. One of them might be this: if people were different than they actually are, then yes, radical individualism could be (upon demonstration!) all those things. But people aren’t different than they are, right?

                Kick it up a notch, then, with another perfectly intelligible question: Can people’s deviations away from radical individualism be accounted for by a theory of radical individualism which includes a critique of how anti-individualistic social constructs arise?

                Well, maybe. But now we’re about four conceptual layers above reality talking about causes and conditions and accounts and justifying our arguments with counterfactuals and “it’s not necessarily the case that!” type responses (which is a real mess to try to clean up), but at the end of the day a concept as simple as the nuclear family (not to mention the extended family or clan or community…) becomes very hard to “explain away” as arising from a “social construct”. And now we’re on a different road toward towards a different destination, seems to me.

                I mean, it’s one thing to present a theory like this in the abstract starting from the premise that people could be different than they are and demonstrating the Better World That Awaits. But to start from the accounts (and counterfactuals, and logical possibilities, and so on) without addressing how people in fact are seems like a tough row to hoe.Report

              • Stillwater in reply to Stillwater says:

                And thinking about that some more: one of the ways the nature nurture debate is often resolved is an appeal to dispositions (or predispositions). I think that might be going on here. Institutional arrangement I is a social construct, but every member of I has a biological predisposition to being a member of a group. If that’s the case, then every institutional arrangement you’ve identified as a social construct could in fact be a social construct (in the sense that they are contingent social arrangement), yet given the predisposition towards tribalism (as Jaybird calls it) there will always be (contingent) social constructs.

                And surely some of those constructs provide overall negative utility (by some measure) and some of them provide overall positive utility even tho they may impinge on the radical freedom of some individuals included in the institutional structure.Report

              • Joe Sal in reply to Stillwater says:

                Thanks Stillwater, it’s going to take a while to work through what your saying here.

                I keep bumping into many folks that say people are mainly social. Is there any way we could do a poll here on OT to see how people favor individual constructs verses favor social constructs?Report

              • greginak in reply to Joe Sal says:

                I think its beyond obvious that people are social creatures. Throughout history people have lived in groups. Groups of varying sizes of course and with a myriad of different arrangements. An infinitesimal amount of people live on their own outside of any group. None of the above should suggest any political ideas/constructs/whatever are better or worse, just that people are social creatures.Report

              • Joe Sal in reply to greginak says:

                Ha! but do they really prefer social constructs over individual constructs, or is it something in the order of path dependency?Report

              • greginak in reply to Joe Sal says:

                Every hominid and primate lives or lived in social groups as far a i’ve ever heard.

                I’m not sure your idea of social constructs really works all that well outside of abstract philosophical discussions. It might work for the way you want to construct a philosophy but i just don’t really see it.Report

              • Stillwater in reply to Joe Sal says:

                Well, it’s an interesting topic, no doubt. Personally, my background sorta precludes me from jumping into the debate where you want to jump into it. One thing I worry about is the concept of a social construction. I think I get what you’re talking about but I’m still worried about how that concept can be cleaved off of things like ashtrays (as a silly example) without begging questions.

                And actually, an ashtray isn’t a silly example, since the (socially constructed) purpose of an ashtray is to fulfill a human need. Perhaps I’ve had my blinders on all these years, but I think of most (not all) human institutional structures which you’d label “social constructions” as serving a potentially important but more importantly easily discernible individual human need or desire. Saying that, I surely admit that some institutions arise out of a more intellectually oriented model (like those based on Marxism, for example, or post structuralism) and that some arise outa a Will to Power with all the attendant propaganda and exercises of leverage (the Catholic Church or slavery).

                But even in those cases, I’m not sure I am personally able to tease out the “socially constructed” part from the “individually constructed” part, since the material realization of even those constructions arises outa (presumably self-interested) individual action.

                Damn dude, it’s complicated.Report

              • Joe Sal in reply to Stillwater says:

                Religion is pretty interesting to look at in itself. My mother was somewhat religious, but felt no need to go to church or share faith matters with anyone. She made religion a individual construct. My father was the same.

                Sis is altogether different, she doesn’t even want to approach religion without going to church and weaving her religion in the social fabric of religion. In this, she is nearly identical to our grandmother which is still weaving into the fabric at 97.

                Yeah it’s complicated, but interesting.Report

              • Stillwater in reply to Joe Sal says:

                I keep bumping into many folks that say people are mainly social,

                Introverts comprise a large part of the population. And “social” doesn’t necessarily mean chatty: it means interacting with other organisms to achieve individual desires. One of the things our increasingly complex, technologically advanced society and economy creates in people is a desire to be left alone. One of the things it allows is the ability to be left alone.

                Except folks aren’t really alone. Transactions keep taking place.Report

              • greginak in reply to Stillwater says:

                There is a reason solitary confinement is considered a painful, often the worst, punishment by people in prison.Report

              • greginak in reply to Stillwater says:

                And on a different note here is more evidence.

                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPlQ6EtArScReport

              • Stillwater in reply to greginak says:

                And I thought we had something greg.

                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj10EzNKA2MReport

              • notme in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Social justice is whatever liberals want it to be in order to justify whatever they are arguing for.Report

              • Francis in reply to Joe Sal says:

                There’s a lot of empty land out there for you to occupy without being bothered by social constructs.

                But the moment that you are living with one other person, you’re dealing with basic social constructs — like division of labor.

                As you add population, you add social constructs. You are, after all, a descendant of African plains apes. Our cousins live today in highly constructed societies.

                ETA: People who recommend “burning down” social constructs are strongly encourage to view that language as metaphorical and use non-violent means of achieving their goals. If not, the rest of us may decide that such individuals be forcibly removed from society. Witness, eg, the Malheur Refuge situation.Report

              • Joe Sal in reply to Francis says:

                You ever really think about how ‘us’ gets parsed?
                That used to kind of worry me, it doesn’t anymore. 😉Report

              • Francis in reply to Joe Sal says:

                You do realize that you’re treading well-worn ground here? The Sagebrush Movement, the Bundy clan, a governor or two … you have any number of people out there willing to say that they’re ready to shed (someone else’s) blood in defense of a poorly articulated theory of liberty.

                But when the Bundys stood up, and took on the man, and waited for the groundswell of resistance to federal oppression to show up …. [crickets].

                If you, Joe Sal, are part of the “we” who are going to start burning down social contracts every 20 years or so, why weren’t you at Malheure? Wasn’t that the golden opportunity to start the fire?

                I’m sure you recognize that the first round of arsonists are going to end up in the pokey. Governments don’t roll over that easily. It’s only after enough activists are behind bars that civil rights movements such as the one you’re considering gain momentum.

                I do wonder, however, how the risk of imprisonment affects your thinking.Report

              • Joe Sal in reply to Francis says:

                “affect your thinking”

                I probably told this story before, but I’ll tell it again.

                When I was about five I loved to play around train tracks. They were endlessly intriguing. Sis would shoo me away, but I would always go back, something about the rocks the steel and the wood all in combination to allow these trains to move from one place to another.

                As we grew older and she started to understand the way my mind worked she told me something funny:

                “You know, I shouldn’t have been worried about you, I should have been worried about the trains.”

                In that regard, don’t be concerned about me going to prison, you should be worried about your prisons.Report

              • J_A in reply to Joe Sal says:

                @joe-sal

                Joe, I did read your post at the time, and did again now.

                I apologize, but my mind doesn’t work like that. I avoid big Capital Letter constructs and concepts, individual, social, Platonic forms, or Aristotelian principles. I don’t believe those things exist outside the imagination of people that like to make lists.

                The problem with neat lists is that everything has to fit the list. And when something doesn’t, people don’t throw the list away. They force the new thing into one of the list’s positions, because, a priori, nothing can exist outside the list.

                so I’m afraid I can’t answer your social constructs question. You can ask me about a specific policy and I can be in favor or against, and we can get somewhere.

                CheersReport

              • Joe Sal in reply to J_A says:

                Yeah I kind of got that feel of you about the Capital Letter stuff before, totally get it.

                The difference between constructs is supposed to give some illumination that there can be a vast expanse between people who prefer few low authority social constructs, and those who prefer many highly authoritative social constructs.

                If we don’t figure out how to balance those, it is easy to end up in a escalations of authority leading to violence.Report

              • Mike Schilling in reply to Joe Sal says:

                Empirically, social constructs are responsible for every war ever fought.

                Empirically, social constructs are responsible for every form of genocide that has occurred.

                Empirically, social constructs have resulted in millions of people being oppressed.
                .

                You could replace “social constructs” with “people” in every one of those sentences, and it would be true. “Oxygen” would work too.Report

              • Joe Sal in reply to Mike Schilling says:

                You can do whatever parameter dance you want to there, fine. Maybe some accredited academic historian can layout the parameters to better define some form of truth you may or probably won’t acknowledge.Report

              • Mike Schilling in reply to Joe Sal says:

                It’s not a dance. Radical fragmentation doesn’t work for the same reason that communism doesn’t work: because people are people.Report

              • Joe Sal in reply to Mike Schilling says:

                What you did above was try to replace social constructs with oxygen and people to try I suppose deny that that is the main parameter involved.

                If you want to change the subject to ‘radical fragmentation’ that is another subject.

                If I really wanted to blow-up social constructs, it doesn’t take radical fragmentation. Just get people all pumped up and concerned about their self interests, have them invest heavily in social constructs and point them at each other.Report

      • Saul Degraw in reply to Burt Likko says:

        @burt-likko

        I think the key phrase in your statement is “half again that age” (I am guessing this means they are 21.) Blow shit up is sort of acceptable as a philosophy when you are 12-24. It is not acceptable in a middle-aged reporter who is the very definition of the Establishment.

        This makes me think of the guy in the Buzzfeed article and something that LGM pointed out. There is an entire sub-culture on the Internet that seems to encourage absolute nihilism. There are an unknown number of people (mainly guys it seems) who have spent their entire adolescence’s in this subculture. The subculture encourages people to never take anything seriously and the best thing one can do is piss people off “for the lulz”

        I don’t think this is quite dangerous yet but….Report

        • greginak in reply to Saul Degraw says:

          The thing about “blow the whole thing up” is that people dont’ really seem to believe that at all. It’s a cool phrase to use but do they want to disband the entire fed government including the military and cops, do they want to end the constitution and officially end the US of A. No. They don’t actually want to blow the whole thing up. They think some degree of chaos or newness will lead to changes. That might be a good or not, but i’ve never actually heard anybody really want to end the us.Report

          • Morat20 in reply to greginak says:

            I’ll go further — the people saying “blow it up” are people sublimely confidant that they’ll be on top when it’s blown up, and also that blowing it up won’t inconvenience them at all.Report

        • Burt Likko in reply to Saul Degraw says:

          No, I’m sorry if I was unclear. “Half again” means (or at least, was intended to mean) that age, plus another half of that age. These are people in their early sixties. Half again of 42 is 63.Report

        • dragonfrog in reply to Saul Degraw says:

          “half again” means 1.5x. So, half again as old as 42 is 63.Report

        • LeeEsq in reply to Saul Degraw says:

          Part of Western society has treated irreverence as the prime value for a variety of reasons since Ancient Greece. Aristophanes might as well be the founder or earliest known example. The idea seems to be is that ultra-serious people are no fun killjoys and cause more problems than they solve. Therefore, you need to take them down.Report

        • pillsy in reply to Saul Degraw says:

          Back when I read Neuromancer the first time, I thought the Panther Moderns were completely unbelievable.

          Now they seem to be the most prescient thing in the book.Report

      • Oscar Gordon in reply to Burt Likko says:

        First off, how did this one slip by me?

        Second, as @troublesome-frog says, generally there are plans in place for a replacement prior to tearing the existing thing down. Or it has been decided that no replacement will be forthcoming (re: dam removal).

        To @kolohe ‘s point, there is most certainly value in the problem solving capabilities of the application of high explosives, but excepting calls for artillery to fire for effect, such applications are very carefully considered and applied only as needed (and even artillery is used judiciously and after careful determination of the desired target), as explosives are truly a non-discriminatory, equal opportunity agent for entropy.Report

    • dragonfrog in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      “What kind of person manages to make it to 42 and still think blowing things up for the sake of blowing things up is an appropriate political theory?”

      Next time you’re on a road trip somewhere, stop in at a small town coffee shop and eavesdrop a bit.Report

  5. Saul Degraw says:

    Derek Thompson explores the free-time paradox in the U.S. Basically rich people work a lot more especially rich men and poor men work less when traditionally the opposite was true:

    http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/the-free-time-paradox-in-america/499826/#article-commentsReport

    • LeeEsq in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      My guess it’s a combination of all three factors. Automation got rid of many of the jobs that men with only s high school graduation would go for. A combination of things including globalization and the changing nature of elite work and culture because of IT made working more hours part of the upper middle to wealthy lifestyle. The ability to access some leisure on the phone or computer made this more palpable.Report

  6. Damon says:

    Life Choices: Y’all made it. Deal. I have no sympathy. Relying on the other guy, in this case HRC, is a sub optimal option to choose. But how much damage can they guy do if the entire Congress is against him? *chuckles*

    Michael Goo: Sounds like one dickhead is calling out another. Now that’s the quality of public servant I enjoy paying for…..not.

    Defector: Nice. Now that this is public, how many other potential defectors will decide to try their luck with some other country because the US has demonstrated that it’s willing to screw them over if it’s convenient to them?Report

    • J_A in reply to Damon says:

      Re Defector

      At the end of the day, China is and will continue to be one of the most important countries in the world. Inherently, China and the USA should not be in conflict. They are too far away geographically for their areas of influence (their back yards) to collide, and there are vast economic incentives for the two countries to engage commercially.

      So why should the USA engage in antagonizing the Chinese government? What’s the advantage to the USA?

      I know there are still plenty that subscribe to the schoolyard bully/Mafia Don principle that “The USA has to extract ‘respect’ from everyone. We cannot allow to ever be seen to acknowledge something is not our concern, or permit someone not bowing to our decisions”. But unless we are willing to impose Imperial USA via blood and treasure, the bully/Don policy is folly. It’s better to stay away from things that actually don’t concern us.Report

      • Damon in reply to J_A says:

        It’s one thing to send your ships through disputed waters and it’s another to pass up on a trove of information in a country we have weak humint resources, especially if it can be done on the down low.Report

        • J_A in reply to Damon says:

          Is the humint worth the dispute with the government? Probably notReport

          • Damon in reply to J_A says:

            Again, I said if the info was on the down low. But absence some experience in the national security area and knowledge of the detailed info he was providing, neither of us could say. And again, that’s not the point. The point is every other potential defector will now reconsider, especially potential Chinese defectors, now that this “event” has been made public.Report

            • J_A in reply to Damon says:

              Why would we take a Chinese defector over, say, a French defector?

              We are at peace with China. China is our biggest trade partner. We need China support for a lot of stuff we want to do (North Korea, Iran, War on Terror, containing Russia??)

              What is the upside to having China’s already fairly distrustful attitude towards the USA, go south even more?

              I might not like the current Chinese government, but the reality is that in the last 30 years the only thing you really can’t do is vote the Communist Party out. Otherwise you can do whatever pleases your heart, including emigrating with all your family if you really don’t like the place.

              All this “we must support the defectors and destabilize the Chinese government because is what Captain America would do” is just carrying over Cold War attitudes. There’s really no difference in saying “we should export democracy to the Middle East”, and “we should break the Chinese Communist Party grip on power”.

              I don’t mind if Chinese defectors go now to Russia. I’d rather they did, and put a wedge between Russia and China. That wedge would help the USA strategically much better that whatever this gentleman could have told us.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to Damon says:

      People should be quite a bit more outraged regarding M. Goo. If regulators getting cozy with business is bad, regulators getting cozy with lobbying groups is just as bad.

      Sue & Settle is bad enough as it is.Report

  7. Saul Degraw says:

    Trump comes out with what seems to be a reasonably progressive childcare policy. Reihan Salem argues that the GOP is in ideological warfare:

    http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/09/donald_trump_s_family_leave_plan_and_the_gop_s_ideological_civil_war.html

    “The difference between the pre-Trump GOP and today’s Republican Party, however, is that small-government conservatives have lost their intellectual monopoly. From now on, they will have to do battle with populists who, like Trump, believe there is a place for government in bettering the lives of working people. If you believe the future of the Republican Party is as the party of working- and middle-class voters, you can expect more government-expanding ideas like this one. Trump’s child care speech may well be remembered as the first shot in an ideological civil war that will define GOP politics for years to come.”Report

  8. Richard Hershberger says:

    I am skeptical of any analysis that treats Native Americans as a homogeneous group. They started from wildly differing cultures, and have had wildly differing experiences since. You can still find, in the more remote corners of the Navajo Reservation, individuals who don’t speak English. (Or at least you could when I lived out there. That was twenty-some years ago. They would be getting pretty old by now.) At the other end, not counting those who have fully assimilated, you have, for example, the Mashantucket Pequot tribe, running the Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut. The utility of combining these two groups as an analytical unit escapes me.Report

    • Yes, but.

      To the extent that a Native American has economic interests related to their tribal reservation, there’s going to be one thing members of nearly every tribe have in common: a stressful relationship with the Federal government and an ability to substantially disregard state and other local governments. And the Federal government will personify in the form of bureaucrats to a degree that most of us general population types will not have lived through.

      So there’s going to be some common factors, whether the tribe is generally assimilated, generally prosperous, or otherwise. Land use policies, tax collection, economic supports, maybe even law enforcement and administration of justice, are all going to be handled by BIA, BLM, and a handful of other federal acronyms devolving power to tribal governments, or not, on an effectively ad hoc basis.

      I can see how this might drive such people towards identifying as Democrats rather than Republicans: Republicans are perceived as generally wanting to reduce the economic supports, stiffen Federal law enforcement powers, and exhibit a higher degree of WASPy social prudery. A resident of a reservation may fear that her neighbors will be seen as ‘welfare queens’ when there can be little doubt that the circumstances of such people are the result of a horrid history — they were on the receiving end of it and Democrats (at least some of them) are likely to substantially more sympathetic to that kind of a claim upon the public fisc than Republicans do.

      At least, I can see this. Certainly I agree with the caution that any attempt to paint any group of people with too uniform a brush is going to be inaccurate, people being people and all. Native Americans have the highest military enlistment rate of any ethnic group in the nation, for instance, and military service has a tendency to Republicanize the servicemember. Practitioners of native religions have also found sympathetic and sincere allies in Republican lawmakers. So there are things the GOP has to offer, but I don’t think there’s any substantial interest in Republican strategists in pushing to get this group into their fold. Particularly among those tribes where a large portion of the people are Spanish-speakers and have had the experience of being confused with people of Mexican ancestry, it’s not hard to see how they might sense that other elements in the GOP are downright hostile to them.Report

  9. Michael Cain says:

    Minor Saul bait at the Atlantic this morning, discussing the importance of the suburbs to the Democrats, using Colorado as an example. While Molly Ball doesn’t come right out and say it, Colorado is more a case of the Republicans handing the suburbs to the Dems.Report

    • As go the suburbs, so goes the state.Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to Michael Cain says:

      @michael-cain

      I concede that suburbs are important for the Democratic vote.

      That being said, Lee has pointed to evidence that shows the Democratic Party (both voters and politicians/leaders) as a whole are going to the Left. But as the article notes, not as far or as fast as the Republicans are going to the right.

      But you seem to ignore that part of the equation was also this 😉

      “There are two overlapping narratives for Colorado’s switch from red to blue. One is demographic: For the past couple of decades, Colorado’s population has grown, becoming younger, more urban, and more diverse. The new voters tend to be Democrats, and there are now about 20,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans, the first time in 20 years the GOP has not had the advantage.”Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to Michael Cain says:

      Another key section:

      This has been the trajectory of the suburban vote nationally, said Matthew Lassiter, a University of Michigan historian and author of The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South. Academics once studied suburbs like Orange County, California, to locate the roots of the new Right. But over the last 30 years, suburban communities from Los Angeles to D.C., Denver to Atlanta, have grown steadily more racially and economically diverse; communities founded on white flight from the inner city now find themselves with an influx of immigrants and lower-income residents pushed out of gentrifying downtowns. The soccer-mom stereotype of the suburban voter—white, square, middle class—no longer applies.Report

      • Suburbs tend left or are moving to the left in blue states and those states becoming blue. Less so in red states. It’s almost as if…Report

      • The soccer-mom stereotype of the suburban voter—white, square, middle class—no longer applies.

        Sticking with Colorado… From 1990 to 2010, the median age increased. From 1990 to 2015, population increased by 2.2M (from a base of 3.3M), with the lion’s share of that (~90%) winding up in the Front Range suburbs (which are, on average, denser than suburbs in many parts of the country, but still not urban). Diversity has increased somewhat. Over the almost 30 years I’ve lived here, my suburb and county have shifted about seven percentage points from Republican to Democrat. The only viable explanation for that much shift is that the soccer moms — white, square, middle class — have become more liberal. Anecdotally, I believe that to be true. The handwriting was on the wall as early as 2004, when Denver’s suburbs approved a tax increase to pay for light rail, over Republican opposition.

        Worth noting that from 2006, in governor and US Senate races (and IMO, of course), the Republicans have nominated exactly one candidate who wasn’t an insane choice — and he won.Report

  10. Dand says:

    Jamelle Bouie is first rate jerk:

    https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/776058450342187008
    https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/776058571058454529
    https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/776058571058454529
    https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/776058902299439105
    https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/776059863503933441

    Jamelle is looking for an excuse to look down his nose at people like me. So he convinces himself that rather than every white person who isn’t elite is racist. In Jamelle’s it’s impossible for people like me to be bothered by elitists snobs and hipsters, it has to be hatred of black people that we hate, that way his hatred of people like me is justified. If the elites continue to use minorities as shields eventually the lower status white are going to start shooting at them. Why is it so hard that working class whites are don’t like the cultural elites, republicans have been electoral progress around this issue since Adlai Stevenson’s dayReport

    • Dand in reply to Dand says:

      I think the root cause of these problems is that liberals in the top 30% of SES are upset that white prole’s class antagonism extends to the top 30% rather than the top 1%. They think its fine to hate the Koch brothers but the Harvard Faculty and NYTimes news desk should be off limits.Report

      • Mike Schilling in reply to Dand says:

        Resentment is not a plan.Report

      • Chip Daniels in reply to Dand says:

        I hate it when those people look down at me as inferior, especially when there is a rung of obviously inferior people below me.Report

        • Dand in reply to Chip Daniels says:

          This is what I’m talking about; I said nothing that in any way merits that response. I have never said anything that justifies people attacking those below them.Report

          • Chip Daniels in reply to Dand says:

            I can’t listen to complaints from Trump supporters about elitism seriously, I just can’t.

            Your own list below (bike lanes, soda pop) are the stuff of petty resentment and culture, not cases of injustice. But its pretty much the same list every Trump supporters gives.

            My “bottom rung” comment is based on the fact that all this class warfare talk seemingly disappears once the Trumpistas own needs are met; Rounding up 12 million people into cattle cars is ok, but forcing them to drink only 16 ounces at a time is an outrage.

            I just don’t buy the idea that any of this has to do with abstract notions of economics or even class. Its about not wanting to lose their position on the second to the bottom rung.Report

            • Dand in reply to Chip Daniels says:

              I can’t listen to complaints from Trump supporters about elitism seriously, I just can’t.

              Of you can’t, that would force you to examine your own basis, much better tell yourself the proles are racist then keep looking down your nose at them.

              Your own list below (bike lanes, soda pop) are the stuff of petty resentment and culture, not cases of injustice.

              There’s that word again. It’s perfectly ok for people like to go on and on about Wall Street and the Koch’s, but one the working class objects to the policies you favor and complains about you it becomes “petty resentment”. Most proles don’t like being ruled by jerks like you. I’m sick of you looking down your nose at me and claiming I’m resentful because I won’t kowtow to you.

              Whenever anyone uses the word resentment it’s basically I way of saying people like me should know our place and meekly follow the commands of our betters.

              Rounding up 12 million people into cattle cars is ok

              You had no problem rounding up the people at the Bunday ranch and putting them into “cattle cars”. You have no problem when Elizabeth Warren calls for throwing people into prison. Yet as soon as working class people call for enforcing immigration law in order stop employers from bidding down the price of their labor it becomes a crime against humanity.

              I just don’t buy the idea that any of this has to do with abstract notions of economics or even class. Its about not wanting to lose their position on the second to the bottom rung.

              Why is it so hard to believe that people don’t like the way upper class liberals treat them? Has the GOP not been running on this for the past 60 years? People like you are the biggest problem this country faces; you cloak your snobbery in the egalitarian veneer of anti-racism. If blacks end up getting hurt it will be because people like you used them as shields.Report

            • Morat20 in reply to Chip Daniels says:

              Some days, I’m pretty sure that there’s a rather wide streak of Americans who are unhappy they’re not victims, and will twist anything they can so they can feel victimized.

              My favorite example was a fellow so angry with SJW’s and how they’re always offended, they he’d spend hours each day finding something a SJW say that offended him, and blasting how offensive it was to everyone that would listen.

              It was so blatant I really wanted to believe he was a performance artist trolling us, but I’ve known him for awhile and he was 100% behind it.

              It’s a fun sort of narcissism. If there’s gonna be victims in American society, it’s gonna darn well BE ME.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Morat20 says:

                Why not, when being a victim of a social ill of some stripe or another often results in some perceived benefit.

                That which is measured and seen as beneficial will be gamed. Being a Social Victim is, in a way, measured, hence it will be gamed.Report

              • Morat20 in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                I don’t think there’s a benefit, other than to get to play the victim without actually suffering in any way.

                I’m sure there’s a scientific or psychological term for it (or if not, the Germans probably invented a word) for wanting to be “A sympathetic and tragic figure to be admired for my suffering and lauded for my perseverance, but without actually suffering anything more awful than someone disagreeing with me”.

                Back in the day when I used to watch the fun evolution/creationist or Christian/atheist debates on Usenet, I believe they called it “Persecution points”.

                Actual victim hood kind of sucks. Real persecution sucks. All that sympathy and praise is MUCH better without having to suffer first.

                Of course there’s also the “First World Problem” effect — people banned from commenting on a blog screaming about being denied their rights and such, or equivalent.Report

              • LTL FTC in reply to Morat20 says:

                I’m sure there’s a scientific or psychological term for it (or if not, the Germans probably invented a word) for wanting to be “A sympathetic and tragic figure to be admired for my suffering and lauded for my perseverance, but without actually suffering anything more awful than someone disagreeing with me”.

                I believe the clinical phrase you’re looking for is Sady Doyle Syndrome.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Morat20 says:

                The benefit doesn’t have to be real, only perceived, for it to have value.

                Hell, the value can be small & highly local (say, a peer group), and it’s still a benefit.Report

              • J_A in reply to Morat20 says:

                Of course there’s a German word:

                DreherkerlReport

              • LTL FTC in reply to J_A says:

                Even better!Report

              • LeeEsq in reply to J_A says:

                Hehehe.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to J_A says:

                Oh man, I had that once.

                Went to the doctor, got a shot, cleared right up.Report

              • LTL FTC in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                What’s more, it sounds like a cross between Dreher and Urkel.

                Gives me the mental image of Dreher (in oversized glasses) standing outside his little Benedict Option community as the inevitable child sex scandal or armed standoff erupts, saying “did I do that?”Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to LTL FTC says:

                @ltl-ftc

                That got a laugh, thanks for that!Report

            • Dand in reply to Chip Daniels says:

              Here’s the thing the people like Koch brothers make so much money that I never have to deal with them and they never affect my life. On the other hand I deal with people like you and @saul-degraw everyday and they make my life miserable. As a result I’d rather stick to you than stick it to the Koch brothers.Report

              • Morat20 in reply to Dand says:

                On the other hand I deal with people like you and @Saul Degraw everyday and they make my life miserable.

                And yet you keep coming back. Is blog commenting your job? Or are you just masochistic? Or what?

                I’m deeply confused why you persist in making yourself miserable, and blaming others for it.Report

              • Dand in reply to Morat20 says:

                WTF I’m not welcome here.Report

              • Will Truman in reply to Dand says:

                While I don’t favor people asking other people what they’re doing here (as it’s prone to misunderstanding), he’s not saying you’re unwelcome here so much as you seem unhappy here.Report

              • Dand in reply to Will Truman says:

                Why does he think that.Report

              • Will Truman in reply to Dand says:

                He took this

                On the other hand I deal with people like you and @Saul Degraw everyday and they make my life miserable. As a result I’d rather stick to you than stick it to the Koch brothers.

                to be a reference to here, while reading it I think you meant it as a reference to life in New England.Report

              • Dand in reply to Will Truman says:

                Chicago actually, but yes I was talking about real life.Report

              • Morat20 in reply to Dand says:

                Ah! Per Will Truman, I misread you. I thought by “here” you meant “This blog” rather than “this locality”.

                Moving households is a far different thing than simply skipping over a poster you dislike.

                My apologies!Report

              • Dand in reply to Morat20 says:

                If you don’t like me why don’t you leave.Report

              • Burt Likko in reply to Dand says:

                I sometimes wonder about why it is people seek out a forum where they express themselves in grumpy terms, and in particular direct their grumpiness at other individuals with whom they frequently disagree. Of course, part of the reason that this forum exists is precisely to offer a place where there is going to be disagreement. We can all find echo chambers where everyone agrees. There’s Breitbart, Kos, RedState, Balloon Juice. That’s not what this place is for.

                People come here because they want to; they want to for their own reasons which may not necessarily be yours. Hopefully they find the experience pleasant; or if pleasure isn’t precisely the right word, then to borrow from the discipline of economics, a visit to Ordinary Times should yield a net gain in utility. The precise nature of that utility may well be subjective and vary from person to person. I’m content to leave it at that, to bend my efforts towards getting as much good original writing as we can, as much stimulating discussion as we can.

                So what I don’t like are implications that pretty much anyone (at least anyone within the Overton Window) is somehow out of place here because they hold a particular opinion or constellation of opinions. Nor am I particularly a fan of statements that reduce down to “But when I offer an argument against so-and-so, I just make so damn much sense, and they just irrationally refuse to agree with me! Therefore so-and-so doesn’t belong in our community.” Not a fan of that.

                BSDI, FTR.

                This doesn’t mean that we don’t have norms, nor does it mean that there aren’t some opinions that really don’t fit in. But no one in this thread is offering anything out of the mainstream. And everyone is here because they want to be here.Report

              • Dand in reply to Burt Likko says:

                I’m sorry I’ll try to avoid personal insults.Report

              • Burt Likko in reply to Dand says:

                It’s all good all around. Just looked for a moment like it was going to become not all good, and I wanted to make sure things didn’t get personal.Report

              • Saul Degraw in reply to Dand says:

                To have standing to sue for an injury, you need to articulate something that is “distinct and palpable” and not “abstract and hypothetical”.

                In what ways, do people like Morat20 and I make your life miserable.

                I get that I can be snobby sometimes. Morat20 not so much. He doesn’t seem very snobby to me. What actions or beliefs do we commit or hold that make life for you miserable. Is it because we have different preferences for how we spend our free time and this makes you feel inferior? Is it because we support civil rights laws and anti-discrimination laws and now the workplace isn’t fun anymore because of a lack of offensive joking?Report

              • Dand in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                Morat20 not so much. He doesn’t seem very snobby to me.

                I don’t think I’ve interacted with morat until he jumped into the thread to tell me I shouldn’t come here.

                What actions or beliefs do we commit or hold that make life for you miserable.

                I didn’t say you I said people like you. I don’t want to post details of my life but I have to interact with upper middle class urban liberals and they are always in a position of power over me and they treat me poorly. I am attempting to make a change and hopefully that will change within the next few weeks.

                Is it because we have different preferences for how we spend our free time and this makes you feel inferior?

                It’s because public policy favors the cultural preferences of people like you and Chip as opposed to the preferences of people like me and the cultural gate keepers are more like you than me and as a result things that you like are given more favorable treatment than things that I like. Half of all Americans live in wither in rural areas or metro areas the size of Kansas City or smaller, how many TV shows take place in those places?

                Is it because we support civil rights laws and anti-discrimination laws and now the workplace isn’t fun anymore because of a lack of offensive joking?

                This is what I mean when I talk about using minorities as shields; I haven’t said one thing in this thread that is in anyway racially bigoted, but people still think I’m motivated by racial bigotry.Report

              • Joe Sal in reply to Dand says:

                I wish you luck in change, and hope you find a better situation.Report

      • Kazzy in reply to Dand says:

        I think there is some truth to what @dand is saying here, at least insofar as we draw lines about who is okay to target and who is not. Because what ultimately happens most of the time is people just punch at the people they want to punch at and come up with justifications for why that is okay later.

        It is why people are all too happy to post profound-esque quote by celebrities who support their pet causes while decrying those who support causes they disagree with as stepping out of their lane.Report

    • Burt Likko in reply to Dand says:

      I feel impelled to wonder if you’ve really read Bouie’s remarks through the most charitable available lens. I read a lot of his work motivated by disappointment that race, and in particular politicians using race to polarize voters, gets in the way of African-Americans and working-class whites being able to find common social ground.

      Also, “shooting“? Really? As in, “firing weapons at”? Literally?Report

  11. Dand says:

    Why is it that academics and journalist can go on and on about Koch brothers and it’s not a problem, but as soon as someone goes after the academics and journalists it becomes “resentment”? People who use the word resentment are mostly snobbish jerks who don’t like being called out on their snobbery.Report

    • Burt Likko in reply to Dand says:

      FTR I think a certain species of Democrat gets more than a little bit too frothy-mouthed and wide-eyed at the Kochs than is either productive or appealing. Convince people that your ideas are better than theirs. Don’t just seethe that they have a lot of money and use it. Treat voters like adults, not sheep.Report

      • The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado (and Why Republicans Everywhere Should Care) is an interesting light read with a Republican doing some mild frothing (I’ve met Rob Witwer, and even mild frothing seems a stretch for him). Essentially, the “Gang of Four” — rich liberal Coloradans, each with their own specific policy interest — cooperated to fund specific candidates to create Democratic legislative majorities and win the governor’s seat. None of the Gang demanded ideological purity. Their strategy was based on the hypothesis that an environmentalist Dem, who might or might not support gay marriage, would be motivated to do horse-trading with other Dems — that is, support gay marriage in exchange for support on an environmental issue.Report

    • Mike Schilling in reply to Dand says:

      The Koches are individuals with a specific political agenda. (Not paranoia: they’ve been very open about it.) Opposing that agenda is politics as usual, and has specific goals. What goals are implied by disliking people you consider to be elitists and snobs? How are you pursuing them?Report

      • Dand in reply to Mike Schilling says:

        What goals are implied by disliking people you consider to be elitists and snobs? How are you pursuing them?

        How is opposing elitist and snobs any different than opposing racists? As far as policy goes: putting an end to bike lanes, opposing soda bans and other form enforced food snobbery, cutting off subsidies for high brow culture, not giving Hollywood the IP protections they desire, stopping plastic bag bans, funding buses instead of light rail.Report

        • Dave in reply to Dand says:

          How is opposing elitist and snobs any different than opposing racists?

          Is this a trick question?Report

          • Aaron David in reply to Dave says:

            No @dave as opposing bigotry (which is what elitism and snobbery are a version of) is what opposing racism is. It is just that one version of bigotry eats at better restaurants.Report

            • Don Zeko in reply to Aaron David says:

              Have we really reached the point where we’re arguing that spending money on bike lanes is just like, say, discrimination in conviction rates and sentencing?Report

              • Aaron David in reply to Don Zeko says:

                Not saying it is, just saying some types of bigotry are OK to some people, while other types are beyond the pale.

                That said, if you want to get people to listen to you about the bigotry you feel is important, you might want to listen to them about the bigotry they feel is important.Report

              • Don Zeko in reply to Aaron David says:

                The trouble I have with this is that bigotry only really matters if it has concrete effects. I’m sure that plenty of non-white people in the world think bad things about white people like me, but it doesn’t affect my life in the slightest, so I don’t care.

                At least as expressed here by @dand , that seems to be the case for snobbery by high-SES liberals. They look down their noses at poor whites and want to tax the sugary drinks they enjoy. Ok, I guess that’s more of an impact than anti-white racism has on my life, but not by much. I’d like y’all to get real about what actually ails poor white people today instead of dancing around the subject with this small potatoes nonsense. If we did, I think we might have to admit that high-SES Conservatives exist, low-SES non-whites exist, and insofar as low-SES whites are spending their political energy going on about bike lanes, college professors, and how many movies are set in New York, they’re using their political resources in a remarkably stupid way.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Don Zeko says:

                insofar as low-SES whites are spending their political energy going on about bike lanes, college professors, and how many movies are set in New York, they’re using their political resources in a remarkably stupid way.

                Perhaps, and I don’t claim to understand this way of thinking fully, but if you look at the quoted bit as more of a signal that is trying to say, “Hey, you high-SES elites, how about spending less money & political capital on crap that makes you feel good about yourselves, and more on stuff that actually helps us low-SES folks”, it might make more sense.Report

              • Don Zeko in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                If that were what I was hearing from @dand and @aaron-david , I would be 100% on board.Report

              • Aaron David in reply to Don Zeko says:

                What I am saying @don-zeko is that for some people, the snobbery is the bigotry they experience, they feel the sting of. For others, it is racism. The bigotry they experience will always be most important to them. Always.

                If you want to move the needle on the bigotry you feel is most important and get others to feel the same, then you might start by listening to those others.
                That is all I am saying. Whether it comes from profs, bike lanes, etc. makes no difference to me, as it isn’t the bigotry that I feel. But others clearly do, and your attempts to minimize those feeling will (in my view) reduce the chances of getting others to listen to you.

                Be the change you want to see.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Don Zeko says:

                Don’t assume people are always very good at signalling. Or rather, don’t assume the signalling is necessarily meant to be understood by the target.

                For instance, say you went to Paris, and didn’t speak a lick of French, and you committed some Parisian faux pas. Some guy notices and starts insulting you in French, and it’s instantly clear you have no understanding of him, but he gets some laughs out of the crowd, so he keeps insulting you.

                You know you did something wrong, you know the guy is upset, but let’s face it, he’s not insulting you in an effort to correct your behavior.Report

              • greginak in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                Maybe D’s should have pushed for some sort of universal health care? Yeah that is an obvious retort, but that is because it’s obvious. Not that D’s are all about helping the working class but they was a huge move towards helping poor and working class people. They put far more energy into that than soda taxes ( which are far more talked about then actually implemented. And they are a bad idea) or bike lanes.Report

              • The WP piece about bike lines doesn’t say that people think they’re a waste of money. It says that they’re built primarily in gentrifying areas, so the reaction to seeing them is a combination of “Hell, my rent is about to go up” and “We never got bike lanes , but the rich bastards get them right away”.Report

              • Saul Degraw in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                @oscar-gordon

                These are tricky issues.

                1. One thing that Erik Loomis, Jamelle Bouie, and TNC write about frequently is how we imagine the “working class” and our image of the working class tends to be a “white guy, who is exurban or rural, works in some industry that requires a lot of physical strength, etc.” At least this is generally how the media portrays the working class. However a growing amount of the working class no longer fits this description. The growing working class tends to be female, tends to be people of color, and they tend to work in jobs like doing laundry at a hotel or as maids, retail, home health care, etc.” They live in cities usually. Policies that help both groups might be hard to find. The Democratic Party might focus on the second group more because the second group votes Democratic much more reliably.

                2. I don’t know anyone who argues that bike lanes are a policy to help the working class. People support bike lanes because they like to bike to work and activities and support them in their local areas. There are probably environmental arguments made as well (less carbon emissions, etc) and public health benefits (you can’t deny that a 30 minute bike ride is healthier than sitting in your car for the same amount of time). What resentment about bike lanes seems to be is people from the suburbs and the exurbs resenting bike lanes in the city. I don’t think bike lanes slow down traffic too much but to hear complaints, it sounds like people believe bike lanes and buses mean it will take five hours to get to Solano County from SF.

                3. Soda Tax. Public health. I think they are silly but any economist will tell you that you tax what you want less of and all the evidence shows that soda is bad for you. So if you want people to make healthier choices, a tax seems to be the way to do it.Report

              • J_A in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                I live in a gentrified neighbourhood and we do have miles of bike lines.

                But half a mile from my gentrified neighbourhood are galore working class apartment complexes, housing hundreds of families (damn happy to live only 10 miles from downtown Houston, in an area with bus services to boot).

                You know what I see a lot? Working class people riding bikes to and from their works. Granted, they are mostly Hispanic, with a few blacks, so perhaps they don’t count. But they get a lot of mileage out of the damn bike lanesReport

              • Will Truman in reply to J_A says:

                Don’t you live in a place where it’s pretty insane to ride your bike outdoors 9 months of the year?Report

              • J_A in reply to Will Truman says:

                No, I live in Houston.

                You are thinking about Minneapolis

                More seriously, you see the working class people early in the morning and in the evening, early night.

                And you see us gentrified yuppies at all hours of the day no matter the heat, because we are gonna use them damn bike lanes because we live in a damn blue city that had a lesbian major that loved them damn bike lanes and won National Bikelaning Prizes for giving us plenty of them bike lanes, and we are Texas proud of them damn prizes we got for building so many them damn bike lanes.

                We are also changing the seal of the city. Instead of a locomotive (who has those), it will be a coiled bike line on yellow with the words “do tread on me”Report

              • Dand in reply to J_A says:

                I see quite a few Chinese immigrant bicyclists and a few Hispanic ones. But they ride less expensive and slower bicycles and unlike the white cyclists aren’t’ inconsiderate jerks. White bicyclists are often very rude Chinese ones never are.Report

              • Dand in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                Where did I say anything bigoted about minorities? I complained about cultural elitism and people keep thinking I must really be mad at minorities. Yes I favor reducing immigration but that’s because I want a tight labor market not out of any personal animosity toward the immigrants themselves.

                It’s not just suburbanites; Rob Ford was elected mayor of because people in the city of Toronto didn’t want bike lanes. A lot of opposition from bike lanes comes from working class urban residents who don’t like the bicyclist using their political and clout to force bike lanes on a population that is largely against them.Report

              • Troublesome Frog in reply to Dand says:

                Aside from bringing in the wrong type of people who might look down their noses at the current residents, is there some other reason to hate bike lanes? I mean, absent bike lanes, it’s legal for bikes to ride in the street and slow traffic, so as a car commuter, I always preferred places with clear bike lanes. Otherwise it was just a mess.Report

              • LeeEsq in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                Has the working class ever been exurban or rural? Even when most working class Americans were white men doing heavy physical labor, they tended to live in cities because that’s where the factories, shipyards, construction jobs, and rail facilities were. Miners and sharecroppers were rural though.Report

              • Saul Degraw in reply to LeeEsq says:

                Yes. I think they are. In SF, you have a lot of working class people who commute in from the outer edges of the Bay Area. Lots of people live in Solano or Sonoma Counties but commute to SF for work every day. Or they live in farther edges of Alameda and Contra Costa County or even further down South like Gilroy.

                Same in NYC. Plenty of people commute from Putnam and Orange into the City every day or the more blue-collar sections of Long Island.

                Lots of factories are in ruralish sections of Indiana.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                In SF, you have a lot of working class people who commute in from the outer edges of the Bay Area.

                This strikes me as a more recent phenomena, as the working class are pushed out of the cities they only dominated.Report

              • Saul Degraw in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                Maybe but I think it has been going on for a while.

                The Mission District and Sunset districts used to be working class Irish (and some Italian) neighborhoods. This ended was over by the 1960s and 70s when those districts became heavily Hispanic and Chinese respectively. There are still some Irish families in the Sunset (they still have a Irish-American Cultural Center) but the dominating ethnicity is Chinese.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                For certain values of “recent”…Report

              • Michael Cain in reply to LeeEsq says:

                Has the working class ever been exurban or rural?

                From the other direction, when was the rural population not predominantly working class? Excluding times when they were predominantly poor, of course. They may not have been a majority of the working class since the rural exodus that ran from 1890 through the Depression, but those that remained behind didn’t suddenly become middle-class or rich.Report

              • LeeEsq in reply to Michael Cain says:

                The might have been poor and did heavy labor but many small holders also had much more secure property rights than other working people.Report

              • Michael Cain in reply to LeeEsq says:

                For some value of property rights and secure, I suppose so. When I lived in a rural area in Iowa as a kid, one of the common jokes you heard was that the banks let the farmers work the banks’ land in hopes that the farmer would able to meet the mortgage payments. Other than the few who had inherited their land free and clear, they were all the bank calling the loans away from losing everything.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                1) I think you could craft policies that work for all working class people, but selling them in a highly partisan atmosphere would be tough as hell. I don’t blame the D’s for focusing on their constituency.

                2) Personally, I’m all for bike lanes, but I understand how some people see them as ‘snobby’, especially if they eat up what was once parking lanes. I love bike lanes that follow trails, as I much prefer to NOT have to compete with cars. I do think cities shoot themselves in the foot a lot of times when they prioritize bikes over cars in poorer neighborhoods, unless there is a large demographic of bike riders in that neighborhood.

                3) Soda tax is stupid because it’s applied poorly. It smacks of an elitist punishment against poor people for being poor. It’s right up there with cigarette & alcohol taxes and drug laws. The poor bear the brunt because those are their little luxuries.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Aaron David says:

                @aaron-david

                You make a valid point, but I think we need more info about what sorts of elitism we are talking about.

                There is rolling your eyes at the guy in the NASCAR jacket and FoamDome.
                There is advocating for more public money going to museums and opera houses because of what a universal public good you believe those to be.
                There is pursuing policy that makes certain people’s way of life harder because you can’t see it as a legitimate alternative to your own way of life.

                A complicating factor is that folks may really be upset about the third type but they talk about the first type because it is more tangible.Report

              • Aaron David in reply to Kazzy says:

                Well, @kazzy on a national level, we are currently having that conversation. That is what this election is about, to a certain degree. On a individual level, I don’t think that is quite true. If you experience bigotry, you don’t really stop to think about where that lands in the greater scheme of things. It is simply your truth, your existence.

                That white kid? Who goes to the best school in town? If he is getting wedgied everyday at lunch, he isn’t going to weigh that against the plight of African American kids two towns over. He is just going to think about his own life, his own problems.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Aaron David says:

                @aaron-david

                Yes and no. That is there truth. Hand waving it away is counterproductive. But at the same time, acting like there isn’t a real-life difference between systemic racism and wedgies is unrealistic.

                A major turning point for me was realizing two things:
                A) Your point above about acknowledging people’s realities
                B) The way TPTB angle to pit one marginalized group against another. I am much more sympathetic to poor white folks and other disempowered groups recently left out of the liberal tent. I may disagree — vehemently! — with them on many matters but that doesn’t mean they aren’t also getting screwed over.Report

  12. Will Truman says:

    Hey people, VOTE!:

    Report

  13. Don Zeko says:

    Dand:
    On the other hand I deal with people like you and @Saul Degraw everyday and they make my life miserable.As a result I’d rather stick to you than stick it to the Koch brothers

    How do they do that, precisely? By trying and failing to tax soda and putting in bike lanes? That makes your life miserable? There’s a big disconnect here between the intensity of your discontent and an account of how these liberal snobs are actually affecting your life, plus a disconnect between your complaints and what Bouie or anybody here is actually saying, that I think is inviting people to speculate (in an uncharitable way) about what is really going on.Report

    • Dand in reply to Don Zeko says:

      How do they do that, precisely?

      The way they treat me on a daily basis in personal interaction.

      By trying and failing to tax soda and putting in bike lanes? That makes your life miserable?

      Those policies are passed with the intent of making life more difficult in hopes that I’ll to be replaced with a hipster. And I have to deal with rude bikers on a daily basis.

      plus a disconnect between your complaints and what Bouie or anybody here is actually saying

      Bouie took an article about what life is like for Trump supporters ignored everything in it and decided that they racist deserving of nothing but contempt. Elite urban liberals use racism as an excuse to justify their seething hatred of rural and working class whites.Report

      • Saul Degraw in reply to Dand says:

        @dand

        I have never met you as far as I know. So you have no idea how I would react to you in life. You have an idea and you let your imagination go wild.

        FWIW, I think the soda tax thing is silly. I know plenty of people who think it is a good idea.

        As for civil rights and anti-discrimination laws, yeah I back those without apology and I don’t lose sleep if people can’t tell racist or sexist jokes at the workplace anymore or as much.

        It is sort of amazing how people get sensitive to accusations of racism and bigotry from minorities.

        Jon Smith: Says something bigoted like blacks are genetically inferior to whites or Jews control the world economy and media.

        Minority: That’s a bigoted remark to make and not true.

        Jon Smith: How dare you accuse me of being racist you liberal bike lane-loving snob. You and your French New Wave movies can go hell. How dare you like to spend your free time in different ways than I do and say you don’t want to spend Sunday watching football!!!!Report

        • Kazzy in reply to Saul Degraw says:

          “You and your French New Wave movies can go hell. How dare you like to spend your free time in different ways than I do and say you don’t want to spend Sunday watching football!!!!”

          That got a little weird…Report

        • Dand in reply to Saul Degraw says:

          Where did I say anything bigoted about minorities? I complained about cultural elitism and people keep thinking I must really be mad at minorities. Yes I favor reducing immigration but that’s because I want a tight labor market not out of any personal animosity toward the immigrants themselves.Report

      • Morat20 in reply to Dand says:

        Those policies are passed with the intent of making life more difficult in hopes that I’ll to be replaced with a hipster. And I have to deal with rude bikers on a daily basis.

        Um, I think that’s an amazing amount of projection.

        You’re attributing malign, personal motives against you to a large class of people who, more simply, might just want some bike lanes so biking is safer.

        Hey, they put in bike lanes on my route to work. I don’t bike. I’m pretty darn sure they’re not trying to get rid of me, I think they were just tired of cars going 10mph stuck behind a bike.Report

        • greginak in reply to Morat20 says:

          Here in Anchorage bikes are a very common mode of transportation for poor people. Yes that is actually a real thing. Riding on most of the roads is semi death defying so its either bike/walking trails or sidewalks. In congested cities it is less common, but bikes are used a cheap transpo by poor/ working class people in some places.Report

          • Don Zeko in reply to greginak says:

            There’s a bit of a conflict between pointing out how many people don’t live in the top 5 metro areas and complaining about bike lanes, because so many parts of the country barely have bike lanes at all.Report

            • greginak in reply to Don Zeko says:

              Well yeah, many places dont’ have bike lanes. There are almost no soda taxes ( i think philly has one now) but they appear to be a major concern. At times it seems the concern is far out of proportion to any actual proposals. And don’t even get me started on stories about bikers threatened by rude drivers. Hell the only time i’ve ever been really threatened by a driver when i was on a bike was when i was in bike lane on a fairly mellow street in the suburbs.Report

          • LeeEsq in reply to greginak says:

            I can’t imagine what it’s like to be car-less in Alaska during the winter.Report

            • J_A in reply to LeeEsq says:

              I know a carless guy in Anchorage. He uses buses.

              Having driven through a large part of Alaska, I doubt you can drive outside of Anchorage or Fairbanks in the winter. The distances are too big, and the population too scant to justify plowing outside the most critical roads.

              I might be wrong though. I’m sure @greginak will correct me. My big Alaska trip was in May so the only snow was the huge piles that were melting at the side of the lesser streets (best season to go, guys)Report

              • greginak in reply to J_A says:

                @j_a You can very much drive around AK in the winter. The highways and roads are plowed decently. The plowing in anchorage sucks though. There is little to none public transpo outside of Anchorage so driving is the only way to get around.

                There are many places though that don’t have road access. These are mostly small, primarily Alaska Native villages. There a few larger hub towns that have significant airports ( pop 2-3k). Getting between villages without roads is by plane or snow machine. So the roads are almost all plowed, there a just lots of territory with no road to them at all.Report

            • greginak in reply to LeeEsq says:

              @leeesq Actually some people make it work either in the cities ( anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau) or in the tiny villages where a car isn’t’ absolutely needed. In fact some Alaska Natives who live in the Bush don’t’ have drivers licenses since they live in such small places and don’t need a car. But being car less is hard.Report

              • LeeEsq in reply to greginak says:

                I was mainly referring to the temperature rather than the ability to get around.Report

              • greginak in reply to LeeEsq says:

                Most people in AK have enough warm clothes that temp is a less of the problem. At least people who are outdoorsy do.Report

              • dexter in reply to LeeEsq says:

                @leeesq, The last time I lived near Fairbanks was 1978 so things probably have changed a lot. There was only a couple of roads that were paved when you got twenty miles outside of town. The gravel roads were rutted and either very muddy or very dusty in the summer. It doesn’t snow much in Fairbanks in the winter. Once it snowed enough they graded the snow and then the roads were smooth and crunched like driving over chalk and had good traction.
                I had a ten year old dodge pickup that would start until the temp dropped below -35 and then it was like you removed the battery. If one had electricity you would plug your car into a car warmer and it would start right up.
                Also, the colder it got the easier it was to hitchhike. I never waited long at -40.
                Two rules to live by when wintering in the interior of Alaska: Never ever leave home without enough clothes to walk home and always carry, not one, not two, but several lighters.Report

        • Dand in reply to Morat20 says:

          This isn’t some crazy conspiracy, Richard Florida has explicitly argued that cities need to build bike lanes in order to attract upper middle class “creative class” gentrifies:

          http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/bike-lane-critics-wrong-new-york-cyclists-article-1.456215Report

          • Jesse Ewiak in reply to Dand says:

            Yes, why would cities want people with good jobs to move to their cities? The SOB’s!

            Also, it’s ironic when all the people I know who ride their bike to work make about 30-40k a year, tops.Report

            • Dand in reply to Jesse Ewiak says:

              Yes, why would cities want people with good jobs to move to their cities? The SOB’s!

              The article more or less proves the point I was making. Cities should be focusing their finite resources on the people who already live in them, not trying well off people who don’t even live there.

              Also, it’s ironic when all the people I know who ride their bike to work make about 30-40k a year, tops.

              Income is A) meaningless without adjusting for age and B) only one component of social status.Report

              • Jesse Ewiak in reply to Dand says:

                “The article more or less proves the point I was making. Cities should be focusing their finite resources on the people who already live in them, not trying well off people who don’t even live there.”

                So cities should not spend any money that will attract people who don’t currently live there?

                “Income is A) meaningless without adjusting for age and B) only one component of social status.”

                So, all those plumbers piss off that women on the subway complain about manspreading would be willing to take the paycut to 40k if they got some positive portrayals of them in the media?

                I somehow doubt that, which is why I basically agree that this incoherent rage against supposed elites like my friend who works as a social worker with illegal immigrants but is an elite because she rides her bike to work and is against deporting illegal immigrants is basically (largely) white working class males who are pissed that society no longer treats them as special.

                That you can’t hit on any woman you want without repercussions, that you can’t say anything you want without repercussions, that society doesn’t only care about the type of things that you care about, and every other silly complain about ‘political correctness’ ruining society.Report

              • Dand in reply to Jesse Ewiak says:

                So cities should not spend any money that will attract people who don’t currently live there?

                No, they should spend on the people that already live there, attracting new well off resident will only make the current residents lives worse.

                (largely) white working class males who are pissed that society no longer treats them as special.

                And the mask comes off. You think working class whites have it too good and need to brought, that‘s why people like you and your friend treat me like shit,. You think we should know our place and the place beneath people like you. I am never going to kowtow to you. I view working class whites is inferiors and convince yourself the they’re all a bunch of racists rather than examining your own elitism. This country spends billions on higher education so that college professors can live high on the hog while we do nothing for coal miners that have lost their jobs.

                Your posts illustrates my point perfectly. You don’t favor a flat social hierarchy you favor changing the social hierarchy to improve your own position. The seething contempt that you have shown for working class whites demonstrates that. You have more social status than they do yet say they have it to good. I’ll demand that they stop playing the social hierarchy game as soon as you stop playing it.Report

              • Dand in reply to Jesse Ewiak says:

                High social status liberal are willing to talk level any social status gap except their own. They’ll talk about removing the distance between themselves and the Koch brothers and the gap between working class whites and working class blacks, but they think that the gap between themselves and working class whites is natural and justified.Report

        • El Muneco in reply to Morat20 says:

          The main drag nearest my apartment has a bike lane over jusr about half its length. There ‘s roughly the same amount of bike traffic, but on one half, traffic moves better and there are fewer near misses. This isn’t me setting up a funny – the half with the bike lane is much much less dysfunctional. It really works where the road width allows one.Report

  14. notme says:

    Mexico builds wall against migrants…

    http://www.ft.com/home/us

    How ironic that Mexico doesn’t want Trump to build a wall to stop their illegals but yet builds their own to keep out illegals from S. America.Report

  15. Will Truman says:

    The described path has always been there with improved national numbers. The national numbers come from people who live in states!

    The cockiness of a month ago was unwarranted, but we’re not at a panic point or anything.Report

      • Will Truman in reply to Jaybird says:

        Right. Unlike the post-convention bounce, this one is a little more unsettling because it’s organic. It’s a natural shift due to various campaign incidents and mood shifts. Events may rebound, but there’s no “Hillary’s convention is coming up” relaxant.

        That said, from this week’s national polling, Hillary is above 45% on three of five, and Trump only in one. The general ceiling remains in tact. For now.

        Once again, if I start talking about blue walls and GOTV as the things that are going to save this election, please pull me aside and gently let me know it’s probably over.Report

        • Saul Degraw in reply to Will Truman says:

          You won’t here it from me except to the extent that I feel all elections are about GOTV and come down to a few swing states (which might be every Presidential election of my adult life).

          Now why don’t people seem to care about the real sketchiness of Trump’s dealings and conflicts over “HRC had pneumonia!!”Report

          • I can’t remember who said it (Silver, I think? Maybe Barro?) but one thing that may be going on is that the media is focusing a little on a lot of Trump’s faults, quickly moving from one to the next. Which seems like it’s being tough on him, but doesn’t differentiate between the little stuff and the big stuff. Deeper stories into a few things (like Trump U, which is easily the biggest vulnerability in my view) might have more impact.Report

            • Saul Degraw in reply to Will Truman says:

              That sounds like a Matt Y/Vox interpretation. Matt Y thinks there are so many shocking things that about Trump that we are all basically fatigued. There are just too many outrageous things to cover every single day.Report

            • Aaron David in reply to Will Truman says:

              I would say they, the media, are looking for scandals and bad comments and Trump isn’t playing along by back peddling on them. Much like Romneys 47% comment, the media kept playing with that, making him own it. This is something that I noticed in the primaries, the way he seemed to get away with things that would sink anyone else. He just didn’t allow the media to run the narrative.

              Much like HRC got caught holding the bag on the Bucket of Deplorable’s, and had to publicly apologize. And now it is an albatross around her neck.Report

            • trizzlor in reply to Will Truman says:

              Quick, name a some instances where Trump has unambiguously lied. I bet most of your examples are either things that are dubious but not outright false (Mexico will pay for the wall, Trump gives a lot to charity, Trump’s proposals are budget neutral), things that only a political maniac would remember (Trump promised that Melania would do a press conference on her immigration status and never did; Trump Steaks/Trump Vodka don’t exist, this list), or things that haven’t been covered in months (Arab-Americans cheering for 9/11). Now do the same thing for Clinton: SHE LIED ABOUT THE EMAILS. So imagine the perception for someone who gets their politics through snippets of CNN with their morning coffee and a couple prime-time events like the Matt Lauer presidential forum. The perception is that Trump, just like every other candidate, is on the receiving end of a lot of negative press – some true, some false, none of which was so bad that he had to apologize – and the perception is that Clinton LIED ABOUT THE EMAILS and it was so bad she’s been apologizing for it ever since.Report

              • Don Zeko in reply to trizzlor says:

                “I opposed the Iraq war from the start, and Libya too”Report

              • trizzlor in reply to Don Zeko says:

                This is good but, strangely, not something he has ever directly been challenged on. And even then it’s not as unambiguous as you would hope because Trump actually said we should go in or we should not go in on at least one occasion.Report

              • Don Zeko in reply to trizzlor says:

                trizzlor:
                And even then it’s not as unambiguous as you would hope because Trump actually said we should go in or we should not go in on at least one occasion.

                If the level of interpretation required to make this particular dog hunt were applied to HRC, you’d be able to count the number of unambiguous lies from her entire political career on one hand. I suppose it’s also possible that Donald Trump turned decisively against the war the day before it started and then didn’t tell anybody about it, but in what universe is that standard of proof required for the things Presidential candidates say?Report

              • Will Truman in reply to Don Zeko says:

                My theory that there is a weird dynamic here where some people don’t mind him lying because that’s the highest possible expression of regret.

                And because they supported Iraq too and are also now lying about ever having done so.Report

              • Dand in reply to Will Truman says:

                I seem to remember that in polls done after elections the percentage of people who say they voted for the president rises and falls with his approval ratings. I’m sure there are a lot of people who say the opposed Iraq from the start when they really supported it.Report

              • Don Zeko in reply to Will Truman says:

                Oh sure. And obviously if he’s going to have a central lie to build his campaign around, claiming to have done the right thing when he in fact did the wrong thing is pretty tolerable. But that doesn’t excuse the media for giving him a pass so consistently on this frequently repeated, easily disprovable lie, and it becomes far more offensive when the candidate also lies all the time about everything else.Report

              • J_A in reply to trizzlor says:

                Once you start with “except for all the times we already know he lied, but it was a long time ago, so it doesn’t matter any more” and “he lied but only a wonk will know he lied so it’s ok because no one will notice is not true” you still have more lies, so I’ll play:

                He said that Clinton has no child care plan. She has one in her web page. Too wnkish still?Report

              • trizzlor in reply to J_A says:

                >>Too wnkish still?

                Do you think a casual news viewer would have this on the top of their head? I’ll admit I didn’t know he said this until I looked at PolitFact and I have a bunch of political Tweeps open in the other tabs right now.Report

              • J_A in reply to trizzlor says:

                I saw it this morning when the news described Trump’s child care proposal (actually martennity leave proposal – I guess calling a maternity leave proposal a child care proposal could count as another lie, but who’s counting)

                Funnily, Reiham Salam described the child care proposal as the first shot in the GOP Civil War that will follow Trump’s demise. So apparently it’s importantReport

              • Will Truman in reply to J_A says:

                One of the things that consumes #NeverTrump but that doesn’t even register on the radar anyone else is the start division between those critics of Trump from the right and the critics from the center.

                Everyone is kind of waiting to see what the post-Trump landscape looks like. We’re all not sure if we’re going to be doing battle against one another or against a durable Trump faction… or both.

                Heaven help us if it’s both, because the Trumpers might win again.Report

              • J_A in reply to Will Truman says:

                The latter is Reiham’s fear.

                For Reiham, is not a bad article. It’s in SlateReport

              • Will Truman in reply to J_A says:

                The Cruz vs Rubio battles never really stopped.

                And it’s not really about the two Cuban-American senators.Report

              • pillsy in reply to J_A says:

                I… do not think Salam’s predictions are worth much. I think the reformicon project generally does a decent job of finding ways to work from conservative principles and/or recast their preferred policies in a way that will help the GOP appeal to new votes at the margins [1], and very bad at understanding what sorts of things will be important in intra-Republican struggles.

                [1] At the margins is really all they need.Report

              • Saul Degraw in reply to trizzlor says:

                @trizzlor

                How about the Wash Po’s story on his foundation?

                I get that there are always going to be people who are blasé and don’t care or underplay. But the amount of partisanship on the right is frightening.Report

      • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

        We also haven’t been hit with a world-ending asteroid… yet.
        And monkeys haven’t flown out of my butt… yet.

        Will is saying that this information is bad for Hilary but it isn’t game over. Does this make him one of those monsters who insists everything happening is more evidence of the perfect of Hilary.

        I will ask… again… what is the point of this comment? Not that you have to have one, but your intentions do matter when people are deciding if/how/when to respond to you.Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to Will Truman says:

      @will-truman

      http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/09/poll_says_trump_s_up_five_points_in_ohio_should_we_freak_out.html

      I suspect that you are right. Though maybe I candidate like Trump needs constant hammering. I think the reason a lot of the Internet left media is frustrated with the MSM is because media bias prevents them from stressing this. I like the theory that the media is hardest on the presumed winner and so far the media presumes HRC will win and she deserves the most scrutiny.

      Some thoughts:

      1. 538 is not good for anyone’s mental health. They know this and it gets them clicks. I checked 30 minutes ago and Florida was light red, so was PA I believe. Florida is back to being light blue and PA is solidly blue.

      2. Rust belt state demographics are becoming more reliably Republican at a faster clip than changing demographics are making red states blue. I think Texas, Georgia and Arizona and NC are changing in ways that are more friendly too the Democratic Party but not quite yet. Meanwhile Ohio and Iowa (and maybe Florida) seem to be getting older, whiter, and more socially conservative/Evangelical at a faster pace than the rest of the Nation.

      3. There was probably too much complacency after the DNC convention and HRC had a very bad weekend though my bias here is that she is tougher than she looks. I can’t tell whether the “basket of deplorables” or pneumonia story hurt more.Report

  16. Will Truman says:

    Report

  17. Kolohe says:

    Don Zeko:
    Being at war isn’t like being pregnant; one war might be more intense and costly than another, and that matters. I’d rather Obama had de-escalated more than he did, but drawing down ground troops while escalating the drone campaign in Afghanistan and Pakistan is a net de-escalation. There’s more to the world than group solidarity. Part of the reduction in anti-war sentiment was because it became Obama’s wars in the Middle East, but part of it was because far fewer Americans were getting killed in the Middle East. In other words, because the anti-war movement got a big part of what they wanted.

    Obama greatly elevated the personnel footprint in Afghanistan before he lowered it.

    I’m gIving the core anti-war movment a lot more credit than you are, in that I believe they actually care about people other than Americans that are getting killed by the absolute power of the state.

    It’s the mood afilliates and those looking to capitalize politically that have revealed themselves to have concern only with American deaths, and place minimal moral value on the lives taken that are not Americans.Report