Trump - Clown Genius

[Ego]

Oh, and as far as "No one is REALLY suffering (in America)", I'm sorry, and I admire and respect the work your wife is doing for the needy, @Ego, but I don't believe for one second that no one is going hungry--in America much less globally. A quick Google search reveals that apparently ~42 million Americans live in food insecure houses. That's 13% of the population. There are also other ways to suffer besides hunger. There are (American) households that choose between food and heat in the winter. There are (American) households that go without medical care due to the expense. Et cetera.

My "let them eat cake" reference was hyperbolic, but importantly, I was not comparing only the plight of our disadvantaged but also the attitude and level of understanding of the advantaged toward the former...

I guess it comes down to a discussion on the definition of suffering. There are some people in the world who are literally starving. Starvation is one type of physical suffering. The kind of suffering we are talking about here is a mental experience. Loss of status and status anxiety. Fear of change. Fear of the unknown. Decline in standard of living. These mental experiences are far more subjective than physical suffering.

Which type of suffering is worse, physical or mental? Does the subjectivity of mental suffering make it more malleable? More manageable?

We know, for example, that a doctor should not prescribes a pain killer to drug away physical pain if they know the patient will use it to continue doing the thing that caused the pain in the first place. It just makes things worse. Pain is a message to change.

Yet we continue to make it more and more socially acceptable to drug away the mental pain these folks experience using alcohol or anti-depressants or anti-anxiety meds or now marijuana or a combination of these. We equate mental suffering with physical suffering and deny the subjectivity of it. We treat the symptoms and pretend that we don't see the elephant in the room, the fact that pain is a message to change.

Mrs. Ego did a survey of seventy food-bank recipients earlier this week. Most were overweight or obese, but would be considered the people you deem as food insecure. One question they asked was, "How many sugary drinks do you consume in a week?" Most said zero. A few who were actually carrying bottles of coke admitted to drinking one or two. No one admitted to drinking more than two per week.

People love binary quotes like the one you used above for food insecurity - pay for heat or buy food. It isn't binary. It is much more complex. Don't buy ten cokes a week. Don't pay for cable tv or high speed internet. Don't sign up for an expensive cell phone contract. Don't smoke marijuana to deal with the anxiety of figuring out how you are going to feed your kids because the money you spent on marijuana is the solution to the problem causing your suffering.

The world is much more complex than the binary state of victimizer/victim. Pain is a message to change. Except in the most extreme cases, drug it (literally or metaphorically) at your own peril.

[Spartan_Warrior]

@Chad, I agree that they will have to change and adapt in order to survive and thrive. That seems self-evident. What I question is whether they can do so without help, and I also suggest that no help is being offered by neoliberal policy. IMO, we've seen the neoliberal solution to the poor and disenfranchised already: sweeping them under the rug through mass incarceration and a global war machine, while actively accelerating the market forces that are already in favor of capitalists and against labor. Therefore, my prediction is that the majority of Trumpers will continue to not adapt--whether or not you or I think they can or should--and their situations will continue to worsen as it equalizes to that of the rest of the global poor--and that one way or another, unrest and instability seems like a necessary result of this trend.

(See, I never said I wasn't among the well-off who fear the fearful. I just think the fears of the fearful are also quite legitimate, unfortunately.)

[Spartan_Warrior]

@Ego: I'm not inclined to agree with your premise that the only issue facing Trumpers is psychological suffering and not physical suffering. Again, I think there is real suffering to be found right here in America far beyond loss of status and status anxiety (though certainly those are factors). It also seems to me that you are also attempting to invoke personal responsibility/blame, which I find sort of irrelevant to the discussion. If anything, the fact that their problems are self-made would seem to bolster my argument that many are incapable of the kind of change that we all agree is necessary without some form of outside intervention.

Not buying ten sodas a week is an educational issue and the entire system from top to bottom is set up to ensure that they DO buy ten sodas a week...

ETA: Maybe I'm making a Michael Moore mistake here. Possibly it's worth noting that I am attempting to describe the situation, not advocate the perspective of Trumpers.

[Spartan_Warrior]

@Brute:

"wouldn't american exceptionalism imply that America's poor have to have it better than other poor?"

American exceptionalism to me would be the idea that America (and its poor) should have it better than other countries (and their poor). The corollary to this is that global poverty is okay as long as American workers are doing comparatively better--a founding tenet in imperialism. I disagree with all of this.

"and unfortunately, as long as the solution to the moral problem is a zero-sum game, Spartan_Warrior is just shifting the suffering around.

sure, it'd be nice if nobody in group A suffered because their bodies became useless to The Machine. but now group B suffers because group A is useless to The Machine. is that morally superior?"

Again, from my perspective, there is essentially group A (capitalists, holders of capital and the means of production) and group B (laborers, who trade work to capitalists in return for wages). More broadly, to use the previously established parlance, this is the "well-off" and the "not well-off". From my utilitarian perspective, taking X amount of "well-offness" from the well-off group and giving it to the not well-off would seem to maximize the amount of people who are well-off. Perhaps this is a little murky. It is true that "well-off" is not that binary. Even the line between capitalists and laborers can be blurred (myself and many other ERErs being an obvious example).

ETA: Though it's worth noting, in the parlance you supplied, can group A (capitalists) ever be "useless to The (Capitalist) Machine", or are they definitionally intrinsic benefactors of it?

[Chad]

@Spartan

I agree they need help and I wouldn't mind providing some (see the other thread on the Trump Problem viewtopic.php?f=20&t=8200&p=129110&hili ... em#p129110 ). Though, I don't think the majority of the Trump supporters want the help that exists or could exist. They live in a fantasy land. At least the ones I personally know and the ones from the rust belt cities.

[BRUTE]

Again, from my perspective, there is essentially group A (capitalists, holders of capital and the means of production) and group B (laborers, who trade work to capitalists in return for wages). More broadly, to use the previously established parlance, this is the "well-off" and the "not well-off". From my utilitarian perspective, taking X amount of "well-offness" from the well-off group and giving it to the not well-off would seem to maximize the amount of people who are well-off. Perhaps this is a little murky. It is true that "well-off" is not that binary. Even the line between capitalists and laborers can be blurred (myself and many other ERErs being an obvious example).

this seems not at all reflective of reality.

in the reality brute experiences, group A (the 1% or whatever) are in charge and buy the system, so they're always well off and almost untouchable. group C is the losers. group B is roughly the "middle class", they aren't clear losers of the system, but they aren't in group A either. group B makes up the vast majority of all humans in any given society.

since A is untouchable and literally owns The System, the question is wether B should subsidize C to feel good about themselves.

ETA: Though it's worth noting, in the parlance you supplied, can group A (capitalists) ever be "useless to The (Capitalist) Machine", or are they definitionally intrinsic benefactors of it?

ok, what does ETA stand for besides estimated time of arrival?

brute would think that as a category, these humans are by definition benefactors. it's very possible to join this group (Zuckerberg) or fall out (royalty maybe, no good example comes to mind).

[EMJ]

ok, what does ETA stand for besides estimated time of arrival?

Here edited to add

http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/eta

[jennypenny]

I'm sure Trump's team is telling him to keep his mouth shut so he doesn't give the press anything to talk about except the Clinton email story. I'm also sure that Trump won't be able to ... because Trump. If I were his handlers, I'd duct tape him and throw him into the trunk of his limo for the next 10 days.

[Spartan_Warrior]

@Chad: That's a good thread. After reading it more closely, it appears this conversation would be more appropriate there, and indeed many of my thoughts have already been voiced. I do have to note that the only real solution that many seem to agree on there is that these disenfranchised people need to move. I don't know how that helps in this case. There is nowhere left on Earth where the skillsets of, say, a displaced factory worker would command value. The work is now done in China for fractions of a dollar. Is that where they should move...? Certainly, mere physical movement is an inadequate solution. It's an adaptation, but not the right one IMO.

@Brute: We'll have to disagree on that one. IMHO the distinction between what you call group B (middle class) and group C ("losers") is not only rather arbitrary (a controlling meme promulgated by Group A) but to whatever extent it is real, that distinction is rapidly fading. That's exactly the situation we see with the "Trumpers" who were once Group B and now find themselves in Group C. Group C is those whose labor is already worthless. Group B is those whose labor is still becoming worthless. If nothing else, Group B is ephemeral. They are losers of the system who haven't realized it yet. I maintain that capitalists vs. labor are the more functional categories.

[BRUTE]

even in Spartan_Warrior's description, the divide between B and C is very important. falling from B to C is what might cause Trumpism and Brexitism.

[Dragline]

even in Spartan_Warrior's description, the divide between B and C is very important. falling from B to C is what might cause Trumpism and Brexitism.

This is very much correct on meta-level, because people don't care about what they have in absolute terms as much as the care about it in relative terms. And Prospecting Theory tells us that a loss is felt much more acutely than a similar gain.

[BRUTE]

on another level, accepting the boundary as arbitrary, it could be said that part of the problem isn't even the loss of status, but the cultural shift that moved the line. it used to be that a hard day's work was just about the most respectful thing a man could accomplish. now, blue collar work is looked down upon, college is promoted and many humans sent there

there are plenty of blue collar jobs that pay 60k or so, while many jobs requiring a degree pay less. maybe the cultural line shift is the bigger problem. Mike Rowe has been addressing this for years.

[jennypenny]

Bill Kristol is on TV suggesting that Trump should announce he will only be a one-term president to make himself more palatable to independent voters lol. Those PNAC guys look more desperate and out-of-touch every day.

[Dragline]

Funny thing is, I think Trump is actually doing slightly better poll-wise than Romney was in 2012 a week before the election.

[Chad]

@Chad: That's a good thread. After reading it more closely, it appears this conversation would be more appropriate there, and indeed many of my thoughts have already been voiced. I do have to note that the only real solution that many seem to agree on there is that these disenfranchised people need to move. I don't know how that helps in this case. There is nowhere left on Earth where the skillsets of, say, a displaced factory worker would command value. The work is now done in China for fractions of a dollar. Is that where they should move...? Certainly, mere physical movement is an inadequate solution. It's an adaptation, but not the right one IMO.

Yes, moving doesn't solve everything, but it would be a requirement for most blue collar workers as most of their work is performed in person. I would hazard to guess that most people use "move" to encompass change in general or at least the beginning of change.

You are correct, there is no place where a displaced factory worker commands value. This is because their skillset has no value in the current world and neither does the cheap, though not as cheap as they once were, Chinese factory workers. Automation makes or will make the majority of them superfluous. They need to move and acquire new skills just like people have done for centuries, and it's not even as hard as it used to be.

[cmonkey]

Judging from the lack of activity on these threads the past week, I'm assuming everyone has retreated to their bug-out locations by now.

[Dragline]

We're all self-medicating in a state of exhaustion. Waiting to see who will win the "I told you so" lottery.

You know if Clinton gets 301 EVs, it will be the same as Nixon in 1968 . . .

[vezkor]

It feels very "See you on the other side" around here. Kind of like stargate when they were jumping into an unknown portal and didn't know what to expect!

[Chad]

Whether I should be home or at my bug-out location entirely depends on who wins.

+1 for Stargate reference.

[jennypenny]

Since this thread popped up, I'll post election bits here. I've finished all of the prewrites which were mostly 'Clinton in tight race' or 'Clinton by a landslide.' Two 'Trump wins' pieces, one tepid (MSM reporter) and one more bombastic than Trump himself (Breitbart reporter).

Everyone is tight-lipped so far. Consensus seems to be that the race is too close to call. If pressed, most assume Clinton wins because the math is harder for Trump.

I haven't heard more than the usual reports of voting irregularities. (why do they bother to tamper with the voting machines in Philly when the city overwhelmingly votes for the democrat anyway??) Everyone is off grabbing dinner now and waiting for the next round of exit polls.

Last night I heard two reporters on TV discussing my county in PA just north of Philly. They said they thought the election might come down to soccer moms in my county which made me laugh since that's me.

Our local polling places were very, very busy. Turnout is usually above average here, but it's already up going into the busy after-work hours. When I voted, four people outside who were handing out literature were having a heated argument. I've never seen that.

If PA and NC both go for Clinton by 9pm, the race is over.* If they are too tight to call by 9pm, there will probably be several states up for grabs and we won't know until very late who the winner is. On the off chance that NC and PA go for Trump early, say close to 8pm, expect a surge in voting in western states and a long night of counting.

I couldn't decide which candidate to vote for. Even when I got to the booth I hadn't decided. Normally when I don't like the candidates I vote based on a single issue, but it's getting harder to choose which issue I should use to make my decision. Even after I voted, I felt unsure. The only thing I was sure about was that I want to get more involved than I am now. DH agreed. We can't leave politicking up to the sleazeballs and then complain about how sleazy politics is.


* How anti-climatic would it be to have what seems like a decade of tumultuous campaigning culminate in an early victory by Clinton with everyone turning off the TV by 9pm on the east coast?