[RD] The origin of post-truth politics.

[Mouthwash]

The pro-abortion left understands why they lost.

Your point is that it's because men want to wrangle control over women's uteruses, right?

The right wing that supports Donald Trump instead of their usual candidates? Yeah. Clinging to the same old paradigm that will keep failing them until the world completely leaves them behind.

Trump has grabbed the white lower-class away from the Democrats. He made gains with minority voters. He called George Bush a liar and threw out Republican free-trade fundamentalism in his campaign. The only place that he's really appealed to olden-day sensibilities is in the culture war.

Sanders would have likely trounced him had he been the candidate and spoke about many of the same issues, with only some mild idiocy on economic policy.

I don't like dealing in counterfactuals, but I doubt this is the case. Sanders would have appealed to the young, but Baby Boomers were fed contempt for socialism with their mother's milk.

But good politicians know how to adapt and navigate it to the best of their ability. Caesar had a lot of luck on his side too, but he was a proactive, high-energy man who knew the right moves from the outset and he came from almost nothing unlike him. Either Trump is the best actor on the planet faking his entire life his entire personality or he really is just a thin-skinned brute who's good at socializing with disenfranchised masses who share his strongman beliefs.

Okay. I'm not really sure if there's anything to respond to here.

Sanders?

Sanders didn't ride on anything mysterious. Basically college kids who have realized they can vote for the first time and think they can usher in a leftist utopia.

My problem with Trump (aside from his viewpoint on everything) that really he is none of these. Rising to the acclaim of the masses is not that hard. Transformers movies sell well, for gods sakes.

Bad analogy- Michael Bay is also secretly a genius.

That may be how blue collar types feel about it (it most likely is). It's wrong, though. Blue collars are in no way more connected with the modern reality than intellectuals.

Intellectuals aren't connected at all. Besides, I'm more referring to Trump's message of Americans losing jobs and suffering. This is something I will always trust voters on more than intellectuals.

The modern reality is found in global cities where one actually get to *meet* the world, instead of hearing vague scary stories about strangers.

You actually think that global cities represent the world? Yeah, all the Muslims you meet in New York City might seem nice but they are (hugely) favorably selected from the worldwide Muslim population. You don't want to go to rural Egypt or Saudi Arabia.

And of course, blue collar provincials are just as capable of leading societies to disaster as their intellectual brethren - often, through trying to upscale ideas that work locally in homogenous groups, and trying to apply them blindly to massive, global, heterogenous groups.

That's what we have nationalism for- to homogenize groups.

 

[Kozmos]

Your point is that it's because men want to wrangle control over women's uteruses, right?

Nah. The general left (which I include general pro-choice people) who isn't so hung upon on ultra progressiveness, knows they lost because they focused on trivial virtue signalling and PC culture instead of what ails most people. Hilary was also entirely disliked by most voters from both left and right which depressed turnout and her hubris meant they almost entirely ignored the key states they thought they locked down.

Trump has grabbed the white lower-class away from the Democrats. He made gains with minority voters. He called George Bush a liar and threw out Republican free-trade fundamentalism in his campaign. The only place that he's really appealed to olden-day sensibilities is in the culture war.

Exactly what Sanders would have solved.

I don't like dealing in counterfactuals, but I doubt this is the case. Sanders would have appealed to the young, but Baby Boomers were fed contempt for socialism with their mother's milk.

Sanders didn't ride on anything mysterious. Basically college kids who have realized they can vote for the first time and think they can usher in a leftist utopia.

Favourability ratings skewed heavily towards Bernie in Bernie vs Hillary vs Trump match-up. He could have pivoted after the nomination to appeal more to the center. Without Hillary's baggage and with Trump's scandals I would have given him a much larger probability of winning.

Bad analogy- Michael Bay is also secretly a genius.

A master of the visual presentation sure that plays to the common trope of zero to hero, but not depth.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

Why because the media in America is Broken

It is. But why?

 

[Traitorfish]

Nah. The general left (which I include general pro-choice people) who isn't so hung upon on ultra progressiveness, knows they lost because they focused on trivial virtue signalling and PC culture instead of what ails most people.

I mean, these days we call it "civil rights".

 

[Kozmos]

I mean, these days we call it "civil rights".

What part? Arguing about preferred pronouns and bathroom rights? Being forced to recognize things such as Lunagender? Yelling equity breach for slightest offense of feelings? Labeling everything someone says racist/sexist?

 

[Traitorfish]

What part? Arguing about preferred pronouns and bathroom rights? Being forced to recognize things such as Lunagender? Yelling equity breach for slightest offense of feelings? Labeling everything someone says racist/sexist?

The first one. The rest, that's just Tumblr. I'd be surprised if any more than a small minority of Trump voters were even aware of it.

 

[Kozmos]

College educated whites were though if I'm remembering the voting stats correctly.

 

[Ajidica]

The first one. The rest, that's just Tumblr. I'd be surprised if any more than a small minority of Trump voters were even aware of it.

I don't even know what "lunagender" is.

 

[Broken_Erika]

someone who thinks that the concept of gender is absurd? (lunatic+gender=lunagender) that's just a random guess.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Someone whose gender changes with the phases of the moon.

 

[Mouthwash]

Nah. The general left (which I include general pro-choice people) who isn't so hung upon on ultra progressiveness, knows they lost because they focused on trivial virtue signalling and PC culture instead of what ails most people.

Here's what I turned up after a few minutes of reading Bernie's Twitter:

"I believe you are entitled to justice and to equal rights, whether you're black, Hispanic, gay or transgender. You are a human being.

Women aren’t going back to second-class citizenship. They are going forward. We are all in this together.

It really is frightening when you have a party controlling the House, Senate and presidency and saying "You know what? We reject science."

We have accomplished too much as a country to see our progress washed away by leaders who are fearful, hateful and misinformed.

Mr. Trump, you talked about being the champion of working families. Now produce. But we won't accept racism, sexism or xenophobia."

Exactly what Sanders would have solved.

Arguably yes, but Trump didn't campaign against Bernie and would certainly have had a different campaign if he had. That's why I don't like counterfactuals.

Favourability ratings skewed heavily towards Bernie in Bernie vs Hillary vs Trump match-up.

I don't understand why anyone would keeping on quoting pollsters after this election (much less to make a point about the election).

He could have pivoted after the nomination to appeal more to the center. Without Hillary's baggage and with Trump's scandals I would have given him a much larger probability of winning.

I said, if I recall correctly, that Trump was a genius for recognizing how much the country had moved on from Reaganite orthodoxy and taking advantage of that.

A master of the visual presentation sure that plays to the common trope of zero to hero, but not depth.

So what? He's a genius. Just not a storytelling genius.

 

[Traitorfish]

Isn't that sort of what I was saying? That Trump and Farage have ditched the norms that characterized even politicians like Thatcher - a woman who hated Labour so much she took milk away from children to prove it- indicates there is something special about them that wasn't present with earlier high profile politicians.

What I'm contesting is that a shift to "post-truth politics" implies there was ever a "truth" politics, which I don't think was the case. Thatcher and Raegan spewed as many falsehoods as Trump, but they masked it with the performance of respectability, and part of that performance was ensuring that they were rarely caught out making a bluntly and demonstrably false statement. They told big, complicated lies, like Reaganomics, while Trump just tells a thousand small, simple lies.

So either that constituency has always existed and fearmongerers like Maggie Thatcher or Enoch Powell were too dim to notice them; or those constituencies have grown enough to be worth courting at the expense of the voters who view such blatant lying as something best avoided.

The latter, I think. But, honestly, I don't think this constituency regard themselves as indifferent to blatant lies, that was really an over-simplification on my part, rather, I think they're indifferent to the attempts of the technocracy and allied media- that is, the "liberal elite"- to hold their favoured candidates accountable. The technocracy was rarely accountable to the populace, it was always large self-policing, and the voting public largely accepted its verdict. With popular loss of confidence in that system as an arbiter of what is and is not "true" has lead to the system of self-policing breaking down, because the leverage the technocracy had over its individual members was public denunciation, and that doesn't work if the public don't believe what you're telling them.

I do think there has been a profound shift in the last few years, but the shift is at root a crisis of authority, not the collective hysteria implied by "post-truth politics". Political culture has changed, but not because the voters are wrong. Technocratic legitimacy no longer functions, people are no longer satisfied that they are voting for a "safe pairs of hand", and alternative forms of legitimacy, more charismatic and emotional, naturally begin to fill that void.

Essentially, I think that the concept of "post-truth politics" is an op-ed-sounding way of reenacting this jpeg:

 

[Ajidica]

What I'm contesting is that a shift to "post-truth politics" implies there was ever a "truth" politics, which I don't think was the case. Thatcher and Raegan spewed as many falsehoods as Trump, but they masked it with the performance of respectability, and part of that performance was ensuring that they were rarely caught out making a bluntly and demonstrably false statement. They told big, complicated lies, like Reaganomics, while Trump just tells a thousand small, simple lies.

The different levels of falsehood do make a difference though. Whatever one thinks of Reagonomics, there was academic respectability behind it. It wasn't some weirdo with an internet connection ranting. I would consider Reaganomics to be in a different category that "post-truth politics" because it doesn't fundamentally disagree with statistics and facts as presented. One can consider their interpretation wrong and believe that the policies were talked up too much; but that is different from stuff like Trump claiming that the homicide rate is higher than it has ever been, that Obama founded ISIS (and stood by that even when thrown a lifeline to clarify that Obamas inaction founded ISIS), goes on baseless Twitter rants that Obama had him wiretapped, and claimed that the Bureau of Labor and Statistics is lying when they put out the unemployment numbers.
To illustrate, a couple of days ago I was watching an old episode of Channel 4s After Dark (because I clearly have nothing better going on with my life) and the topic was housing in the UK. One panelist was a Thatcherite Tory and another was a rehousing director. They vehemently disagreed about interpreting the housing statistics and what the results of the policies were, but they were in general agreement that the numbers were accurate and when the director called out the MP on engaging in willful misrepresentation of the numbers, he dropped that point and the discussion went on. The Tory MP may have been wrong, but for my being wrong about policy doesn't equate with post-truth politics. For me it is the willful disregard for basic facts that characterizes post-truth politics and that is what worries me (besides the anti-intellectual, small-minded xenophobic provincialism but that isn't exclusive "post-truth politics".)

The latter, I think. But, honestly, I don't think this constituency regard themselves as indifferent to blatant lies, that was really an over-simplification on my part, rather, I think they're indifferent to the attempts of the technocracy and allied media- that is, the "liberal elite"- to hold their favoured candidates accountable. The technocracy was rarely accountable to the populace, it was always large self-policing, and the voting public largely accepted its verdict. With popular loss of confidence in that system as an arbiter of what is and is not "true" has lead to the system of self-policing breaking down, because the leverage the technocracy had over its individual members was public denunciation, and that doesn't work if the public don't believe what you're telling them.

I do think there has been a profound shift in the last few years, but the shift is at root a crisis of authority, not the collective hysteria implied by "post-truth politics". Political culture has changed, but not because the voters are wrong. Technocratic legitimacy no longer functions, people are no longer satisfied that they are voting for a "safe pairs of hand", and alternative forms of legitimacy, more charismatic and emotional, naturally begin to fill that void.

I'd be more inclined to believe that if the "leaders" of "post-truth politics" were a man-of-the-people rebelling against an indifferent ruling class, but I'm not seeing that. Trump is a billionaire property developer who has stuffed his cabinet full of investment bankers, CEOs, and generals (with poor Ben Carson the odd-one-out). Farage is an ex stockbroker, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is as posh as they come, and Marine le Pen is a Parisian lawyer. Not exactly your factory worker who saw his job destroyed by an unresponsive corporate elite.

 

[Hygro]

The conflict playing out today is between people who prize abstract thought and believe they can understand the world by studying it, and the people who live unexamined lives but don't like their values being trampled. My sympathies are with the latter. Intellectuals can easily lead societies to disaster, but, as I see it, only living and working as a blue-collar provincial (with all the barbecues and religiosity that entails) can give someone the direct contact with reality that intellectuals prize.

Really good article there. I take issue with your blue collar exaltation. In the moment of physically manhandling the machines and knowing your eating is part of that manhandling, that's a reality touchdown. But those people are people, prone as anyone to magically modeling their world.

 

[Mouthwash]

I don't think that's true locally, so long as they aren't segregated from populations with different experiences. People will always know how satisfied they and their friends are with their jobs/living standards.

The best outcome is them having a lot of veto power over the government but not much ability to steer it.

 

[Hygro]

Hm, bring it home for me, I'm not seeing the direct connection between that and that word "only", even if taken loosely.

 

[Mouthwash]

I think there are certain epistemic barriers that intellectuals can't breach and even if they could, there isn't a way to identify those scholars reliably (plus they're far outnumbered by ill-informed commentators with agendas). Actually having skin in the game, being a part of things, is how you truly know how things are in your segment of reality.

 

[Agent327]

Right. Let's get back to the start for a moment though:

I think it's time to explain just what my position is on this.

Trump has been named as a liar for making false claims, and (as most of you probably know) this has been backed up by something like every media fact-checker in existence. However, I would question the value of a fact-checker to begin with. It's tremendously easy to state true facts which mislead. After all, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a criminal, and we don't uphold criminals as shining examples to society, do we?

MLK was a gangsta. Who'd have thunk?

This is the easiest type of lie to make (even Big Lies must be chosen very carefully), and it's one that the press tells constantly. Ordinary people cannot refute law professors or political scientists who explain, with an avalanche of facts and statistics, why total open borders or socialism are right and necessary. It requires much more familiarity with a subject to be able to tell if an argument is misleading than it does to refute mere claims, like my example of MLK being a criminal. The average American (by which I mean the 'can't find Iran on a map' crowd) doesn't know much beyond their own community and their own life.

I remember a guy called Hitler, who reportedly said: 'People will easier believe a big lie than a small one.'

The conflict playing out today is between people who prize abstract thought and believe they can understand the world by studying it, and the people who live unexamined lives but don't like their values being trampled. My sympathies are with the latter. Intellectuals can easily lead societies to disaster, but, as I see it, only living and working as a blue-collar provincial (with all the barbecues and religiosity that entails) can give someone the direct contact with reality that intellectuals prize.

I'm not quite sure what that has to with Mr Trump being a habitual liar.

Trump isn't trusted by this segment of society because he doesn't make outrageous claims, but because he does. You can't go online today without being bombarded by endless journalists and studies explaining why the left is right about *everything,* unless you deliberately seek out non-leftist websites. Celebrities and public intellectuals compete to see who can race to the left the fastest. The values that the white lower and middle-class were taught as children are now regarded as phobias, illnesses which must be overcome to be politically correct. Not only are they held in contempt by the high society, it seems like the rights and culture of immigrants are valued far more than their beliefs are.

That's pretty bold. It can also be seen as a summary of Mr Trump's 'message'. Is it true though?

So while the media usually gets its facts right, it always has an agenda. Trump, who flagrantly violates any standard of political correctness, seems to speak to them from his heart (ludicrous exaggeration really is how these people talk). The world that the Democratic party created wasn't one in which a classic conservative like Mitt Romney could have won, but Trump saw, understood with amazing precision and took advantage of it. For this, he counts as the greatest politician of the age.

Shouldn't a politician have an actual goal though? In order to even qualify for 'greatest politician of the age'?

Is Trump really a threat to the republic? When politicians lie, it's usually because they're trying to disguise some kind of malicious action that they don't want exposed, which doesn't seem to apply as neatly here. Trump gets away with lying because the contempt felt by his voters for the media is so great that they will no longer listen to it even when it's obviously right. It's good politics to snub an institution that people hold in contempt. But the reverse is also true. Trump has been branded by the media as a white nationalist, a woman-hater and a privileged one-percenter. The more he attacks outlets like the NYT or Washington Post, the more they shore up the segments of America which despise Trump. In my opinion, both Trump and the media are feeding off each other. America's division is to their advantage, and they have every reason to whip up their side further.

EDIT: I'd like to take back what I said about the media getting its facts right. They don't. They just get them from authoritative sources and nobody except the right is interested in calling them out on it.

Brilliant edit. The right is calling the media out on the use of authoritative sources. The media should use unreliable sources instead?

Summing up, I'm not quite sure what your position is. Which synchs remarkably well with What is Donald Trump actually about? Food for thought.

 

[Lexicus]

Actually having skin in the game, being a part of things, is how you truly know how things are in your segment of reality.

The only way to even approach an accurate description of reality is to compare many different perspectives.
You seem to mean "academic" by "intellectual" judging from your use of the word "scholar," so I will say that academics who have been able to look at and entertain many different perspectives will necessarily have a better handle on reality than anyone, whether blue collar, or academic, or white collar, who is anchored in a single perspective.

 

[Mouthwash]

The only way to even approach an accurate description of reality is to compare many different perspectives.
You seem to mean "academic" by "intellectual" judging from your use of the word "scholar," so I will say that academics who have been able to look at and entertain many different perspectives will necessarily have a better handle on reality than anyone, whether blue collar, or academic, or white collar, who is anchored in a single perspective.

I said in "your" segment of reality. I'm not asking for a dissertation of the effects of free trade on the American economy, I'm asking how it has affected you personally. Scholars are welcome to debate the grand theories of human history, but there's not much room for them in actual policy.