Hygro
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mrt, I was thinking the same thing when I saw the article.
Farmboy, I feel you
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The article provides a good explanation for why people vote for Trump, but I don't think the problem has really been a lack of explanation. The plight of the culturally differentiated and disaffected rural class has become a pretty ubiquitous trope throughout the election, and it's not like those darn liberals are running around with no clue as to the psychological reasons different constituencies might vote for Trump. The real question, which the article fails to address, is what the appropriate response is to Trump support; because an explanation of that support doesn't amount to a justification, and by no means necessarily implies some sort of "let's meet in the middle" approach.
For instance, the article talks about how a lot of rural folk are put off by what to them is a completely alien and unwarranted rejection or downright destruction of 'traditional values', such as with the transgender bathroom dispute. Yet what solution is that suggesting? Should city elites change their position so that they're being more sensitive to the beliefs of rural America? Or is the article just attempting to articulate the precise opposition that progressives will have to overbear in the struggle to impose an objective morality?
So I'm kinda just confused as to what's new and interesting about this article. What does it tell us that we don't already know? Or is it more that it nicely develops an already known idea?
For instance, the article talks about how a lot of rural folk are put off by what to them is a completely alien and unwarranted rejection or downright destruction of 'traditional values', such as with the transgender bathroom dispute. Yet what solution is that suggesting? Should city elites change their position so that they're being more sensitive to the beliefs of rural America? Or is the article just attempting to articulate the precise opposition that progressives will have to overbear in the struggle to impose an objective morality?
So I'm kinda just confused as to what's new and interesting about this article. What does it tell us that we don't already know? Or is it more that it nicely develops an already known idea?
You were earnest, and wrong in the manner inno noted. What is the issue again?
The us vs them trope is always bad news, and nearly always coming from an agenda by the writer of such articles.
Cheetah
Deity
The article didn't so much present anything new, but it presented it clearly, concisely and in a well-written way. That's what made it so good.
As to your questions: "It's the economy, stupid!"
If people are struggling in their lives, and feel that their outlook is getting ever bleaker, then of course they don't feel like backtracking on what little they find still has value in their lives! If all the typical Trump supporters could suddenly find their economic outlook to look more like how it was in the 1960s, they would be much more open to ideas about tolerance for minorities or softening traditional values.
The appropriate response to the Trump support (as long as one sees it as a problem in itself) is to approach his supporters with actual concern for their economic plight, with real ideas for how to alleviate it, and actual policies to make their lives better. Solutions which still aren't coming.
As it looks, Clinton will win in November, and the continuous neo-liberal policies of Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama-Clinton will continue, regular people will find their outlook ever grimmer, and at some point another Trump will appear, as the disenfranchised search desperately for another hope. I imagine a black or latino demagogue who speaks to white, rural Americans could wipe the floor at an election.
Trump wouldn't have solved anything. He's a hypocrite at best, but his presidency would have laid the groundwork for the political changes necessary in America, and by extension, the rest of the world.
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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And this says it all (again). Progressives will have to overbear that opposition. The people writing those pieces assume that history can, must, only go one way, their way. That progressives (whatever that may be) will win. Nowhere, in all those pieces pretending to dissect the "problem" of Trump supporters, is to be found an idea of backing off and conceding to them on any issue.
The irreducibility of all those Trump supporters stems from one root cause: they have been told that they must bend. That they are on the wrong side of history. But they don't want to. TINA rears its ugly head and tramples all over those who dare disagree. It must be so and everyone who opposes "progress" is wrong, a "problem" to be solved. This is what has pissed off half of the US (and many other countries around the world) so tremendously that they risk very serious internal conflict if they keep going down that path. There is no one group of "Trump supporters", there are many. United by one thing: opposition to TINA.
This. You are getting it.
I had a bit of sauvingaun blanc and was pissy
timtofly
One Day
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Equality does not lead to every one being equally rich. It could be that every one is equally destitute.
Lexicus
Deity
How is this relevant to what I said?
LOL. A black or Latino Trump? No. The danger is that someone with considerably more discipline and polish will show up pushing an agenda like Trump's, that speaks to and emboldens the worst elements in society (as @Sommerswerd keeps saying, The Klan, I say, the Klan!). I have been saying the same thing, if the neoliberal rot is not stemmed we will soon be yearning for the good ol' days when Donald Trump was the craziest phenomenon in US politics.
Sad that neither of you can see that a Trump presidency would have done nothing but accelerate the the neoliberal screwing-over of the very people Trump claims to represent. It genuinely frightens me that thoughtful people like the two of you can say things like this. A Trump Presidency would be a disaster unparalleled in American history, with basically no redeeming factors.
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Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
Who is Tina?
timtofly
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You mentioned textbook and consequences....
If a "Trump" cannot get US where you want it to go, why do you think a failed Democratic agenda will ever do the job? Has not Trump slain both parties at the same time? I am not even a Trump supporter.
Lexicus
Deity
Can you not answer the question or are you just unwilling?
The Democrats are putting the country on a path that leads vaguely toward where I want it to go. The Republicans want to move the country away from where I want it to go. Trump wants to move it away rather faster than most of the rest of the Republicans, is all.
Trump has not slain both parties - he has only slain one ("his" party). The Democrats and the neoliberal establishment are likely to emerge from 2016 stronger than they'd have been without Trump, at least for the next few years.
Just to be clear, this was the point of my phrasing - it's unclear what form of solution the article is prescribing, if any, and what it describes could lead to wildly different conclusions, ranging from the abandonment of liberal views for the sake of rural sensitivities, to no change at all, but a greater understanding of the 'opposition'.
(I share Hygro's confusion as to who or what Tina is).
Pls be more civil 
Cheetah
Deity
The exact nature of the demagogue doesn't matter. I think we agree on the fundamental danger, in any case.
I basically agree with everything I've quoted here, except for the bold part.
The exact point is that Trump will be a disaster! Yes, he will accelerate the neoliberal scewing-over. Yes, he will move the country on the wrong path faster than other Republicans.
I agree with you, but those things you listed are features, not bugs. I have confidence in the institutions of the USA, their abilities to avoid tyranny, despotism and nuclear war, and think they are strong enough to survive four years of Trump, though I am sure they will take some damage. However, the silver lining is that Trump can be a wake-up call to the elites -- both Republicans and Democrats -- to get their acts together and actually start working for the people. (And as an added bonus, it might be a wake-up call to Europe and other US allies, to try and get more of their <snip> in order.)
Shock therapy, if you will. The alternative seems to simply be kicking the can further down the road, and to discover more misery around the corner, and with an even harder shock necessary to make the USA change course.
Of course, maybe you optimism on the Democrats will turn out to be correct. That would be a good thing. I just feel a four-year Trumpocalypse is the safer bet.
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innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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There Is No Alternative.
Neoliberal policies must be carried out because There Is No Alternative, was Thatcher's justification for crushing all those employees of "outdated industries" and let the "free market" sort out the consequences.
And has been the excuse of governments carrying those out everywhere since.
I think that many of those people that can hand Trump the victory can see him for what he is. They expect him to do more neoliberal screwing. But they're also voting (or not voting - I still believe that abstention will decide the election) to punish the faux left that has for the past decades claimed to defend them while actually screwing them. So long as the likes of Clinton (and Obama, see his present to the insurers disguised as universal healthcare) can win elections while selling out their supposed constituencies things are not going to get better.
See the UK and how much the neoliberal, blairite faux-left is scared of losing control of the Labour Party. And they lost it, but they had to lose a series of elections for that to happen.
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Lexicus
Deity
The institutions of the USA were designed to uphold tyranny and despotism (slavery, racial apartheid) and have already succumbed to civil war once.
I also don't see how what I said about the Democrats can be described as optimism. It is realism. By contrast the suggestion that Trump's presidency might yield any 'silver linings' is a ridiculous - and dangerous - fantasy.
I also don't see how what I said about the Democrats can be described as optimism. It is realism. By contrast the suggestion that Trump's presidency might yield any 'silver linings' is a ridiculous - and dangerous - fantasy.
GoodEnoughForMe
n.m.s.s.
I wish everyone who thinks Trump is necessary shock therapy, or has a silver lining, would talk to the thousands of Latino and black children who are scared ******** at his presidency, and have the guts to tell them it's all for the best.
Much like the article. It is good, and necessary, that we sympathize with the rural poor, with those who are left behind by the neoliberal order. The fact is, politics has focused almost entirely on the "middle class" and never on the working class. But I do wish these thoughtful elicitations of what poor whites want were written about what BLM wants, or poor Latinos and black Americans, or Chicago's southside, or Detroit, but they never are, because they are not white, and will be ignored. That isn't meant to demean the care we issue toward poor whites, I just wish the care was equitable across racial demographics.
Much like the article. It is good, and necessary, that we sympathize with the rural poor, with those who are left behind by the neoliberal order. The fact is, politics has focused almost entirely on the "middle class" and never on the working class. But I do wish these thoughtful elicitations of what poor whites want were written about what BLM wants, or poor Latinos and black Americans, or Chicago's southside, or Detroit, but they never are, because they are not white, and will be ignored. That isn't meant to demean the care we issue toward poor whites, I just wish the care was equitable across racial demographics.
classical_hero
In whom I trust
Looks no one here even understands why anyone would vote for Trump. Not surprising considering your liberal bias here.
The article was very informative as to why. Thanks for dropping by with your opinion, as useless as it is.
metalhead
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I must have whiffed on that. But, as I have read and processed this attempt to exonerate racist family before, allow me to retort.
So, if Trump was really about economic anxiety and nothing else, Trump would have an awful lot of people of color on his side. After all, every wave of economic disenfranchisment over the last ever has disproportionately affected people of color.
But, er, people of color are poised to vote against Trump in historic margins. So it's quite obviously not economic anxiety. Because the real anxious people, who have been systematically disadvantaged? Aren't willing to toss our whole multicultural democratic tradition aside because nobody is meeting their needs. It takes the position of unique privilege occupied by small town white people to think that they alone deserve government intervention to preserve their way of life. I can't tell you how much we need these people to just die so we can have a decent society.
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