cmonkey wrote:Not to sound haughty or anything but I have to purposely dumb down how I talk to people and also slow the speed at which I talk simply because it's impossible to have a conversation otherwise. Could be I'm the one with the problem though.
I hear you, but I think it's all of us. Seriously. Nobody really understands where anyone else is coming from. I don't think people ever did understand one another, but today, in the age of lightning-quick communications, having to slog through the translation process to get to the point where you can exchange ideas with someone else generally feels like dumbing down to me because it takes forever and is so prone to error.
I think the article that @theanimal posted earlier in the thread about
the politics of resentment really hit the nail on the head. Trump's success boils down to the fact that he has tapped into the fear, anxiety and resulting anger of white people over 40. These people grew up with a virtual guarantee of success in return for hard work, but they have not been successful in the manner that they expected for the amount of effort that they put in. The backlash against this looks a lot like racism and xenophobia, and therefore stupidity, but I think the bigger deal is that there are way more people at the table now but the pie itself is smaller thanks to technological changes and outsourcing. There is a supply-and-demand problem in the job situation for hourly workers. More blue-collar people in the country and more blue-collar jobs out = fear and anxiety, especially for the blue-collar people who were "here first" and therefore believe they should get first dibs on any available opportunities.
There is a huge gap between the expectations of older white people, fostered by the generation before them, and what they have actually received. Just like the way Millennials were promised a good job if they went to college, but that hasn't panned out for many, either. In both cases, the result is anger. And no one is taking the complaints seriously in either case, because there are ways out of both situations for those who have foresight, ingenuity, gumption, and/or a healthy sense of stoicism. The ironic thing to me is that the two groups (old disaffected white people and young disaffected college grads) have veered in completely opposite political directions in response to these upheavals, but the underlying issues are the same in both cases.
I said the exact same thing about Clinton, word for word, to G. I then added, "but I hate Trump almost as bad, so if the contest is between Trump and Sanders, I would vote for Sanders." And G said he'd divorce me if I did that. 
It just speaks volumes about the level of critical thought going on around us.
